


Ghost Town Howls

by Alexdoesthings



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Horror, M/M, Mystery, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Psychological Torture, Slow Build, Survival, Trapped
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-22
Updated: 2016-07-07
Packaged: 2017-12-12 15:01:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 27,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/812882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alexdoesthings/pseuds/Alexdoesthings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles and Derek wake up in an abandoned town surrounded by mountain ash and patrolled by some unknown monster. Unable to escape they must figure out how they got there and what happened to the town. However,  they soon start to find that the desolate buildings and empty streets aren't so harmless after all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Stiles and Derek woke up differently than they normally do on a Saturday, namely nose to nose with each other. Brown eyes stared into light green, absorbing this strange development for a few seconds.

“Not exactly how I intended to wake up this morning,” Stiles said, a mischievous grin crawling across his face, “but I guess it must have been a good night.”

Stiles raised his eyebrows suggestively and Derek glared at him. The werewolf wordlessly brought one hand up, planted it on Stiles’ face, and shoved him roughly away. Stiles cried out and grabbed at his squashed nose, protesting, “Other couples resolve their problems with words, Derek.”

“Shut up,” Derek commanded, sitting up and surveying the tiny room around them. The ceilings were low, only a few inches over six feet, and the ten by ten square of a room consisted of one mattress set in a corner and cement benches built into the walls on all sides. It was colorlessly grey with one bare light bulb on a pull chain casting a harsh yellow light around the room. There was a heavy looking steel trap door set into the ceiling that locked from the inside with a wheel.

“Looks like an old bomb shelter,” Stiles observed, looking up at the trap door and using the cement bench next to them to leverage himself up. He stumbled off the bed to examine the trap door more closely.

“It locks from the inside,” Stiles muttered, confused, frowning at the locked door.

There were no other entrances or exits as far as he could see. It made no sense that the door would be locked and yet they were the only two people there. Stiles wracked his brains but could come up with no recollection of anything out of the ordinary happening last night that would have landed him here. It had been a quiet Friday evening and he’d gone to bed after surfing the web, perfectly normal.

He grabbed onto the wheel and, with a grunt of effort, turned the lock, undoing it with a loud, metallic scraping. He smirked at his success and braced his palms against the metal surface, shoving at it with all his strength. It lifted for a bare second before Stiles couldn’t hold it up any longer and it clanged back down. He rubbed at his sore arms, making a face.

Derek had been watching with growing amusement and when Stiles caught Derek’s eye he frowned at him, annoyed. “Like you could do any better,” Stiles challenged, still rubbing vigorously at his bicep.

Derek quirked an eyebrow at the challenge and wordlessly stood up. Stiles stepped back with a welcoming wave of his hand, motioning for Derek to have a crack at it. The werewolf crossed the small space in a few easy steps and looked up at the door for a moment. He examined it with his fingertips for a second before drawing his arm down and shoving his palm, hard, against the metal. It swung easily outward on its hinges in a quick arc, wobbled for a second before setting itself to point up at the high industrial ceiling above.

“Show off,” Stiles muttered mutinously, glaring at the werewolf.

That earned him a smirk from Derek. He reached up and effortlessly pulled himself through the opening. Stiles huffed something about werewolves and their stupid superhuman strength under his breath and, he wasn’t entirely sure but, Derek might have laughed.

Stiles grabbed the opposite edges of the opening, mirroring what Derek had done and tried to pull himself up in the same manner, but got stuck halfway up with his arms locked awkwardly. He squirmed around, kicking his legs, trying to gain some leverage.

“Need some help,” Derek’s voice was far too smug for Stiles liking and he shot him a glare before dropping back into the bunker with a stubborn, “No, I’ve got this.”

He changed his approach so both of his hands were on the same side of the lip this time and hauled himself up to his chest. He wiggled until his belly was on edge the edge and he was mostly out before trying to get a handhold on the floor to pull himself the rest of the way up. The cement floor was mostly smooth but there was enough texture in it to scrape his palms raw and Stiles grumbled, trying a different tactic, setting one hand against the trap door and using it to shove himself out.

It would have worked perfectly had he not slid, panicked, and pulled the door the wrong way. It started coming down on him, heavy, hard metal shooting straight at his legs and lower region with enough force to slice him in half. Stiles cried out and knew even as he struggled frantically, that he wouldn’t get out of the way in time.

Derek was suddenly there, grabbing the heavy metal door and giving Stiles the couple of seconds he needed to clear his legs and roll out of the way. He heard the metal slam home again, the sound echoing dully around the large space.

Stiles giggled nervously and said, with false bravado, “See? I totally got this.”

“Get up Stiles,” Derek said, exasperated. Stiles felt like childishly sticking his tongue out but forewent the gesture in favor of doing exactly what Derek suggested because the concrete was unpleasantly cold and gritty underneath him.

They were inside an empty warehouse, little more than a giant steel box with beams spaced evenly across the floor to hold up the high ceilings above. There were several windows set high into the walls that were shedding sunlight on the grey floor, the light beams made visible by dust floating lazily in the air. The place smelled of rust and disuse, chains and cables hanging desolately from the ceilings.

Stiles spun in a slow circle once he’d regained his feet, trying to take in the whole building and find any clue as to why they were here or where indeed here happened to be. Derek started striding away from him and Stiles glanced over to ascertain his direction. He was greeted by the sight of a large sliding door that was mostly shut except for one small, human sized gap that spilled light onto the starburst of dirt on the cement floor, radiating out from the door where it had blown in at some point.

“Do you know where we are,” Stiles called after Derek, running to catch up with him as Derek reached the gap between the door and wall.

“Nope,” Derek answered briskly, turning sideways and stepping through the doorway with more grace than anyone had a right to, leather jacket barely scraping the rusted metal.

“I thought werewolves were supposed to have an innate sense of direction,” Stiles said sardonically as he stepped through into the blinding afternoon sunlight after Derek, “like you guys know exactly where- Whoa.” The last word left him as a whoosh of air that emptied his lungs as he took in the scene before him.

The sun was at its peak and cast the world around them in stark relief that revealed very blade of grass in crystal clarity. They were at the end of the lane and looking one direction they could see a small town. The town though, was entirely abandoned. Cars sat on the side of the road, some with their doors thrown open like the occupants had been in a hurry to escape, while others had obvious crashed against each other. The truly strange thing about the cars though, was that they were all cleared off to the sides of the road as though someone had taken a giant snowplow and shoved them out of the way.

The weirdest part of the entire scene though, by far, was the total, almost crushing silence. Even Stiles human ears picked up on the fact that, although they were only a few hundred yards from the center of the small town at noon, there was absolutely no activity. It looked like there hadn't been for a long while, the cars were piled with dust that coated the windshields and some of the buildings around them had started to fall into disrepair. The lawns and landscaping far overgrown their designated squares and grass and weeds grew as tall as their thighs.

“Can you,” Stiles waved a vague hand gesture, couldn’t come up with what he was trying to say, and changed the question, “Is there anyone here?”

Derek’s face was unreadable as he turned his head slowly from one direction to the other. His eyes caught on a tan building that looked like it could be a butcher shop and his expression grew darker, as though he smelled something foul but he turned back to Stiles before he could ask about the change and said, “There’s nothing living here.”

Stiles crossed to the nearest car and peered into it at the layer of grime that was built up in it, marring the paintjob and doing no favors to the leather interior. “ Doesn't look like there’s been for awhile,” Stiles observed.

He straightened up and glanced around again. “This is prime real estate,” Stiles said with a crease marring his forehead, a puzzle laid out before him, “why has no one come to collect on it?”

He spun on his heel to fix Derek with a confused expression, knowing the puzzle was missing a few pieces. “Can you tell who dumped us here or maybe why,” he asked, hoping Derek could pick up a trail that might lead them to some answer instead of more questions.

Derek took a second then answered, frustrated, “There’s no scent.”

“No tire marks,” Stiles observed, looking at the road then glancing back at the warehouse door, “No footprints in the warehouse, nothing,” he sighed in frustration and exclaimed, “This is getting seriously creepy. What tosses an alpha werewolf and human into a bomb shelter under a warehouse in an abandoned town and leaves no traces? God! I don’t even remember being taken.” He had started pacing agitatedly as he talked, the lack of information grating on his nerves.

Derek had no answers, as lost for information as Stiles, memory just as blank. He turned to look down the other direction, away from the town center. He spotted something lying on the road that shouldn't have been there, that made him tense his shoulders. He started over toward to verify he was actually seeing it.

“Did you find something,” Stiles called, trying not to sound too eager as he chased after Derek.

He suddenly spotted it too and couldn’t believe he hadn’t noticed it earlier. Although being human it was rather difficult to spot a raised line of black on top of the dark grey asphalt without being a little closer to it. There was a line of mountain ash, just like the one he had created to keep the Kanima inside the warehouse, sitting on the road.

Derek reached it first and tested it. His hand could not pass over the line and he reported, “It feels like it circles the whole town.”

“Wow these guys are really stupid,” Stiles laughed kneeling down by the black line of mountain ash, “You can't trap a human with this stuff.”

Stiles dramatically stretched his arms in a self satisfied way, preparing to break the line and free them from their impromptu prison. Derek was staring out into the trees beyond them, not paying attention to Stiles words. He suddenly tensed and grabbed Stiles’ shoulder in warning. “Don’t do that yet,” Derek cautioned.

Stiles, who had been about to break the line, look up to protest and saw Derek’s eyes had become brilliantly red and he was glaring into the trees, uneasy. He followed the alpha’s line of sight and saw nothing but trees innocently swaying in the afternoon breeze.

“Derek what-” Stiles started but was cut off by a high screeching that made Derek cover his ears, pained. Stiles shot to his feet and backed away from the line instinctively. That sound raised the fine air along Stiles’ neck and he had the feeling that they should get out of there,  _now_.

He grabbed Derek’s sleeve and tugged on it to indicate his wish to act on this impulse and Derek glanced at him before jerking his head to the building with the bomb shelter they’d woken up in. Stiles nodded and started running in exactly the same movement.

They tore across the ground and Stiles slid through the gap in the heavy sliding door and yanked up the door to the shelter. He looked up at the sound of heavy rusted metal scraping together. He saw Derek shoving the door closed behind them with considerable effort. Stiles didn't have time to protest that they would have no way out if Derek shut the door; he just hoped that the werewolf could manage to open it again. The high, grating screeching was getting closer. 

“Derek,” he shouted urgently, indicating that the alpha should hurry up and get in the steel hole in the ground.

Derek headed his warning and abandoned the effort to close the door the last inch. Derek reached him just as Stiles cleared the lip of the shelter and had barely made it out of the way when Derek jumped down after him, slamming the trap door behind them and cutting off their source of light.


	2. Chapter 2

The lock loudly snapped into place and a heavy silence fell over them like a lead blanket. They were pressed instinctively next to each other, Stiles’ left side to Derek’s right, waiting with shallow breaths.

It was maddening for Stiles, not being able to hear what was happening, not knowing if the creature was right above them, ready to tear the metal door apart and devour them. He cursed himself for only now thinking that, maybe, locking himself inside a small confined space with only one exit might have been a bad life choice.

It felt like hours later when Stiles finally got enough breath and courage back to tentatively ask, “Can you hear anything?” It was a sentence barely spoken but he knew Derek could hear him by the slight twitch in his arm, as though the sudden intrusion of Stiles’ voice was startling. Still, Derek didn't answer him for a very long time. Stiles was about to ask again when Derek finally spoke.

“It stopped,” Derek said, quietly, concentrating on the sounds from outside that were probably muffled at best, even to his sensitive hearing, by the thick metal and cement around them. Stiles felt the arm pressed against his finally his relax. “I don’t think it can get through the ash,” Derek said, relief evident in his voice.

Stiles breathed his own sigh of relief and moved away to fumble for the light. For a few seconds as he moved blindly without the warmth of another person next to him, lost in cold space, Stiles half expected something to jump out at him. It would be just his luck that something would have slipped into the bunker while they were away and be hungry for a nice slice of Stiles. The ghosts and ghouls faded from his vision though as he pulled the chain on the naked bulb and the small room was suddenly illuminated in harsh yellow light that glinted off Derek’s eyes for a second.

“What the hell was that,” Stiles asked, flopping back against the wall and sliding down onto one of the built-in concrete benches.

Derek narrowed his eyes at a spot on the wall, not seeing it, lost in his own thoughts. “That’s our warden,” he said darkly.

“Great,” Stiles said in exasperation, throwing his head back against the wall and glaring at the ceiling, “It can’t get in and we can’t get out. So we’re just locked in this creepy ghost town until what? Something _else_ comes along to kill us?”

“Probably,” Derek said tersely.

Stiles shifted his glare to Derek, annoyed. Derek’s arms were crossed over his chest and he glared stubbornly back at Stiles.

“You are no help whatsoever,” Stiles muttered, exasperated. Derek raised a condescending eyebrow at him.

Stiles stomach chose that second to make a loud, upset grumbling sound. Both Derek and Stiles glanced at it.

“Hungry,” Derek asked with a smirk.

“No, I’m having an alien baby,” Stiles snapped sarcastically, trying not to feel embarrassed.

“Wouldn't be the weirdest thing that’s happened today,” Derek said, rather reasonably, reaching up and turning the lock again.

He shoved it outward with his supernatural strength and lifted himself out of the shelter. Stiles followed grudgingly. He reached the hole in the ceiling and Derek stuck a hand in to help him out. Stiles considered climbing out without his help, just to spite him, but he knew he’d get reamed for taking so long and being so uncoordinated about it, again. To preserve his pride, he glared at Derek’s offered hand for ten seconds before accepting it.

He could almost feel Derek roll his eyes at him but the alpha said nothing as he set Stiles on his feet and shoved the trap door closed again. Stiles lead the way to the small chunk of sunlight that peaked around the small gap Derek had left in the sliding door when he’d abandoned his attempt to slam it closed and stood aside to let Derek yank it open again, which turned out to be far easier than closing it had been.

They moved cautiously through the abandoned wreckage and everything they did felt huge in the massive silence that surrounded, what must have once been, a lively small town. They eventually found some freshly canned food in the most non-threatening home they came across, an elderly woman’s house that was an obnoxious shade of light pink trimmed with canary yellow. Derek did not need to point out that she was a home gardener or that she had six cats and was somewhere over the age of sixty for Stiles to understand the type of woman that had lived in the little house down the lane. Perhaps that was why they were drawn to it, for the grandmotherly quality of the place.

She must have been a sweet woman who took care of the local children sometimes because they found some little rain boots and a few discarded flip-flops of varying sizes by the front door; although it was obvious she lived alone. Stiles tried not to think too hard about where the kids were at the moment. There was a smeared little hand print halfway up the wall in the little hallway leading to the open garage in what Stiles decided resolutely was red paint; as that was the only sign of anything even hinting toward violent or horrible happening in the little cottage type home, for his own sanity, he refused to acknowledge its existence.

“It’s kind of weird,” Stiles mused, watching the little flame light under the pan on the gas stove, “there’s electricity, gas, and water still running, but there’s no one here. No rescue teams, no survivors, no buyers or owners looking clean it up, nothing. So what the hell happened to these people?”

Derek’s eyes were hooded and his jaw was set in a manner that meant there was something really bad he wasn't talking about. Stiles was not paying him any attention though, messing with the kitchen utensils that were stuck in a neat row inside a plastic chicken shaped holder.

“It’s like some freaky modern version of Roanoke,” Stiles continued, drawing with a finger in the dust. He dramatically swiped his finger at the end and snickered at his handiwork which read, in all caps, _CROATOAN_. Derek walked over as though to examine it and instead swiped a hand through the dust, effectively destroying Stiles' calligraphy.

“You’re going to burn something if you don’t stop messing around,” Derek reprimanded, as though keeping Stiles on track somehow justified destroying his dust art.

“Do you even know the meaning of the word fun,” Stiles asked pointedly, returning to the pan anyway and trying to artfully flip the spatula but managing only to fumble it. He knew he was making a fool of himself but it gave him something to think about besides the reason for the comfortable home being turned into an empty shell. Even the cats had fled the scene, although their litter boxes and food bowls still remained to gather dust and rot.

They ate quickly and, despite Stiles attempts to keep the atmosphere light with witticisms and general small talk, reached the outside with relief, as though something had been stalking them all through the house. There was something about being in there that sent a chill up Stiles spine and set Derek on edge; although they couldn't logically pinpoint the reason, neither strayed far from the company of the other.

They didn't say anything about it, but the miscellaneous houses, offices, and municipal buildings didn't sit right with the pair. It wasn't just that they were empty or even the air of panic that hung about them from the previous occupant’s hurried escape, although both were reasons to set the pair on edge, it was something else entirely. There was a feeling about everything in this town, almost like they were being watched but worse, like some omnipresent specter hung about the place, waiting patiently for them to drop their guard so it could rip them limb from limb.

So, by unspoken agreement, as the sun started to set and the sky bled from blue to deep maroon, Derek and Stiles made their way back to the warehouse with a pack of canned goods each. Maybe it was the familiarity of it, or the fact that there was a reinforced steel lock on the door, but it felt safer to be there than anywhere above ground. It seemed the one place where that nerve wracking feeling did not fully penetrate.

“I call dibs on the bed,” Stiles cried triumphantly as he hit the concrete bottom of the bunker.

He raced to it and threw himself onto the mattress, dumping his pack on the bench and spreading his arms and legs out to the far corners to secure his claim. Derek fell gracefully and almost soundlessly through the hole. The door followed him a second later and he turned the lock into place with one hand.

“There’s room for two,” Derek stated easily, pulling his own pack off. There was not even a hint of awkwardness in Derek’s words, as though he found this perfectly normal, just stating the facts.

Stiles scrambled into a sitting position and stared at Derek incredulously as the werewolf stripped off his jacket and folded it over his arm. “Is this some sort of werewolf thing? I’m not sharing a bed with you. I don’t even share a bed with Scott,” he said, scandalized.

Derek set aside his pack on the bench beside the mattress and his dark leather jacket on top and said, cool as you please, “You can sleep on the floor then.”

“Hey, I called dibs,” Stiles protested, feeling Derek was soiling the grand tradition of calling dibs with his blatant disregard for the claim.

Derek set one hand on the bench beside his jacket and loomed ominously over Stiles in an obvious challenge. Stiles, who’d been the subject of many of these “do what I say or die” looks from Derek, tried to keep up a glare of his own, but could feel himself shrinking back.

“Okay, okay, fine,” Stiles said in appeasement, holding up his hands in surrender. Derek backed off and settled on the mattress to unlace his shoes.

Stiles tried to feel dignified in the knowledge that any human, and probably most werewolves, would have backed down from that glare. Derek could be downright terrifying when he wanted to be.

Stiles started sullenly listing all the reasons that Derek would be sorry under his breath. The werewolf ignored him and put his shoes on the bench next to his jacket and the pack of food. He settled himself with his back facing Stiles, legs bent at the knee and one arm curled around to cushion his head. Stiles wasn't sure why but the position looked almost lonely. Although loneliness seemed to be a constant, occasionally unnoticed element to Derek’s personality, this was different; it was as though there were people missing around him that, despite the years he’d gone without, his body had never gotten used to not being there. Stiles couldn't figure out what he wanted to do about it, but the wish to do something was an itch under his skin.

“Are you going to stare at me all night,” Derek asked annoyed, startling Stiles out of his thoughts.

Stiles kicked off his own shoes and threw his hoodie haphazardly onto the bench so it hung off precariously, one arm dangling down like a dead man’s. He settled with his back resolutely facing Derek. He thought for a second about turning off the light, but the unrestrained, dull yellow was an unexpected comfort compared to the crushing darkness he knew would follow the pull of the chain. He nuzzled into his arms and tried not to think.

It was a difficult task though, as thoughts inevitably wormed their way into his head around his normal waking defenses. He tried not to think about where his Dad thought he was and if he was alright. He tried not to think about the unknown creature out for their blood that was probably patrolling the ash line at that very moment. He tried not to think how the walls and ceiling of the old bomb shelter were trying to close in on him. He took each of these thoughts and coached himself to breathe through them until they had melted away into the back of his mind. After awhile, long after Derek's breathing had evened out and his face had gone slack with the peace of undisturbed unconsciousness, Stiles dropped off into an uneasy sleep.


	3. Chapter 3

When the first scream assaulted Stiles’ ears he jerked awake with a loud shout. He turned his head to look everywhere, scouring the small space for the source of the noise. There was another sound, low and groan-like, almost human but not quite. It was a chilling sound, one that was heard nowhere outside of bad scary movies and phony haunted houses at Halloween. One became two and suddenly they were multiplying, each with a slightly different twist on the sound. There were so many voices, a grating scream, harsh yell, piteous moan, all vying for Stiles attention with all they had.

He had woken Derek with his shout and the werewolf took a glance around as well but sensed nothing out of the ordinary. He looked to Stiles, confused. His human companion was breathing erratically and his heart was pumping as though he’d just run a mile; he was terrified, eyes jumping around the ceiling and walls sporadically.

“Stiles,” Derek asked urgently, sleep still coating his voice and making it heavy, “What’s wrong?”

There was laughter every so often among the other sounds now, eerie, super villain, child in a horror movie type laughter. Stiles whipped his head toward a particularly high and grating screech, like a cackling witch, to his left that startled him. It sounded so close but there was nothing there that he could see. He whipped his head back toward Derek whose confusion was becoming increasingly concerned.

“You don’t hear that,” Stiles asked incredulously, voice oddly strained and high from his panic.

“Hear what,” Derek asked sharply.

“You’re a werewolf, how do you not hear that,” Stiles practically screamed, trying to hear himself over the onslaught of sound that was getting louder with every second.

He clamped his hands over his ears and screwed his eyes shut tight, trying to block it out. It made absolutely no difference. The sounds of humanity in turmoil assaulted his ears with relentless and merciless haste. He pressed down harder, desperate to make the human and inhuman screams and squeals go away.

Derek suddenly grabbed his wrists in a painful grip and dragged his hands away from his ears, calling Stiles’ name in alarm. As though Derek’s touch was the mute button on a remote, the sounds faded back into nothingness. Stiles eyes snapped onto Derek, pupils huge with fear. Derek’s alarmed voice matched his face as Stiles eyes grazed over him from the small distance between them. Needing to look away from Derek’s intense, worried scrutiny, Stiles’ eyes jerked down to glance at his hands caught in Derek’s tight grip. The tips of his fingers sported blood where he’d apparently dug his blunt nails into his skull. The scratches on both sides of his head throbbed dully and he knew he’d be developing a headache later.

Stiles huffed out a breath that was part disbelief and part relief. He was sure that if he had stuck his head in hell that was exactly what it would have sounded like and if he never got anything else he asked for in life, Stiles hoped he’d never hear that again. He could feel his body starting to tremble. He sat there in shock for what felt like a very long time before Derek transferred both of his wrists to one hand and used the other to take a gentle hold of Stiles’ chin to force his face around to look him in the eye. Derek looked deadly serious and Stiles found that he could conjure no fear of that look in his current, shaken state, as he might normally have done.

“What was that, Stiles,” Derek asked, enunciating every word clearly. He was looking deeply into Stiles' eyes with a commanding air that demanded obedience that probably came from being the alpha, Stiles reasoned distractedly; that look would probably scare any beta into doing exactly what he told them. At the moment it was working pretty well on Stiles too as he felt compelled to give an answer.

“I think I know why it locks from the inside now,” Stiles’ voice was shaking and thin.

Derek frowned for a second, uncomprehending, but then understanding lit his eyes, his hand dropped from Stiles face as his head whipped around and his eyes caught on the lock, which he had set back into place, a precaution that made both of them feel better despite the fact there was no obvious danger within the ash line.

“There were voices and screaming,” Stiles muttered, voice stunned and automatic, “like there were a hundred people in the room yelling at me.”

Derek turned back to look at him, but Stiles’ eyes were fixed on a point on the mattress as he spoke. His eyes drifted back up to meet Derek’s and he looked drained, stunned.

“How did you not hear that,” Stiles asked, voice dead, “It was so loud and…” He shivered violently and pulled his hands away from Derek, who relented after a second, allowing him to regain ownership of his limbs. As Derek’s hands dropped away from contact with his skin though, Stiles heard the noises starting up again, like a dull rumble of thunder on the horizon as a storm approached.

He cried out and impulsively grabbed onto Derek’s wrist, staring wildly up at the ceiling of the bunker. Derek was frowning up at the ceiling now too and there was wariness in his eyes. His posture was tense like something had rubbed his nerves the wrong way but he couldn't have said what.

They sat there for a moment like that, Stiles clutching Derek’s wrist for dear life and the both of them staring at the ceiling as though they could somehow see through it to whatever was up there. Stiles wet his lips nervously with the tip of his tongue and said quietly, “There’s something out there, something wrong.”

“Yeah,” the werewolf agreed, distantly, voice quiet. Derek’s face was grave and he seemed to be trying to hide how shaken he was.

He had felt something out there, some presence with the consistency of gasoline, thick, tar like, toxic, but as soon as Stiles grabbed him there had been nothing again, as though it had just evaporated. Derek had never felt anything like it, every instinct screamed at him that this was bad news and to stay right where he was and Derek was not going to disobey that order tonight.

“What are we going to do about that,” Stiles asked, unable to raise his voice much above a whisper as though he was worried whatever it was would hear him and come devour him.

Derek was quiet for a moment, assessing, then he said, certainly, “Nothing right now.”

Stiles swallowed thickly and said, voice leaning toward hysteria, “So we’re just supposed to what? Go back to sleep with that thing hanging over us? Sounds like a great plan, Derek!”

Derek shot him a sidelong glance with one raised eyebrow as he asked, “You have a better idea?”

Stiles fidgeted and looked away from Derek, trying to think of something. Whatever was out there and whatever had made those haunting sounds was something Stiles wanted gone. It freaked him out a lot more than he’d like to admit. Derek was right though; he could feel in his gut that this wasn't something they could rip apart with claws and a spare crowbar.

“Go back to sleep Stiles,” Derek advised, turning to roll back onto his side. He tried to pry his arm gently away from Stiles but he clung on. When Derek looked back at him, Stiles turned his face away ashamedly; he felt like a three year old woken by a nightmare, crawling into his parent’s bed for comfort. He swallowed and tried to pry his fingers away from their tight grip on Derek’s wrist, but the second he managed to lift them away from Derek’s skin the rumble of the sounds threatened to start again. He placed the tips of his fingers back on Derek’s wrist in a flash and the starting roar died away once more. Derek sighed resignedly, thankfully seeming to understand the situation without further explanation from Stiles, which he was immensely grateful for.

Stiles started to open his mouth to say something, suggest what they do about this even though he had no ideas, but Derek unexpectedly wrapped his right arm around Stiles chest and forced him to lie down on his side. Stiles yelped at the sudden shift in position and his head bounced once on the soft surface of the mattress.

“Brute,” Stiles protested.

He tried to shove Derek’s arm away with his hand but the werewolf was already settling himself behind Stiles, curled up against his back. Derek felt exhaustion weighing him down like a leaden blanket despite the fact that he hadn't done much that day to warrant it. His hand found Stiles’ flailing one and looped their fingers together as he muttered, “Shut up and get some sleep.”

Derek’s arm, which was laid lazily over Stiles’ chest so both of their hands rested somewhere near his sternum, restrained a lot of his movement and Stiles was forced to stop his attempts to wiggle away from the alpha. Stiles stared down at his fingers woven through Derek’s in some shock. He was inexplicably reminded of otters holding hands while they slept to keep from floating away from each other in the currents. Derek’s warm breath brushed his ear and the back of his neck softly as he breathed out evenly, already drifting into unconsciousness. Derek's even heartbeat was pressed against Stiles' back, tapping out a calming rhythm that was taking the tension from Stiles body against his will, each beat relaxing another muscle on it's way.

The whole position felt intimate in a way that should be strange, especially with Derek, but was decidedly not. Stiles tried to puzzle that out for a second but he found his eyes drifting closed, inexplicably exhausted. He was amazed that he could fall asleep at all after what he'd just heard but, for perhaps the first time since they had woken up there, Stiles did not feel the low ceiling pressing in on him or the terrors that waited for them just outside the bunker. Stiles felt safe.


	4. Chapter 4

Stiles woke, feeling very warm and comfortable, to readjust on the bare mattress. He would have gone back to sleep without any recollection of waking at all had his left leg not slammed into something solid and there been a resulting rumble under his ear. As it was, he moaned at the interruption and nuzzled instinctively closer to the warmth under his head, chasing sleep. He was almost lulled back to unconsciousness by the rhythm pumping gently under his ear when the scene suddenly clicked into place in his head; that had been Derek’s grunt of surprise and annoyance from Stiles kneeing him in the thigh and that was Derek’s heartbeat under his ear. His eyes shot open and there, not but a couple inches from his nose, was the collarbone of one Derek Hale, whom he was using as a human pillow.

“Stop squirming,” Derek demanded, sleepy and annoyed.

His voice was an unexpected sound in the silence and he could hear the words start as a rumble up though Derek’s chest and could traced the movement up his neck and past his lips as they were formed. It was kind of surreal. Derek’s eyes were still closed even though he was obviously awake and Stiles was amazed by how unfazed he was by their position, though he could just be tired. Stiles was suddenly very awake and, belatedly, he shot upward with a cry of surprise, praying he hadn’t drooled all over Derek’s shirt and made himself into werewolf chow by mistake.

The angle was wrong and Stiles was tumbling backward with one leg caught underneath him. He threw his arms out instinctively to catch himself and his right wrist slammed down with bruising force on the inside of Derek’s forearm lying across the bed behind him. Derek’s eyes shot open and glared at him, irritated. Stiles hurriedly pull his hand away and opened his mouth to say something apologetic when he froze.

He remembered the screaming from the night before just as his fingers lifted from Derek’s arm. He was about to replace them when he stopped, listening hard. There was no rumble of noises coming to assault him this time, nothing but good old fashion silence. His fingers were still hovering over Derek’s arm and, out of the corner of his eyes, he saw Derek’s indefinable, light green eyes watching him closely. Stiles lifted his hand further, testing, but still nothing happened. Stiles couldn’t help the relieved laugh that slipped past his lips as he moved his hand away and set it down on the mattress, away from Derek’s arm.

 Referring to the previous night’s presence in the warehouse above, Stiles grumbled, irreverently, glaring at the ceiling, “If it had to be a ghost, why couldn’t it have been a silent specter?”

“It wasn’t a ghost,” Derek said easily, as though he was dismissing a perfectly legitimate theory.

Stiles stared at Derek, brain caught and ground out on the ghost comment as Derek sat up and stretched, cracking his neck and flexing the fingers in his hand as though they were cramped.

Stiles finally asked, incredulously, “How would you know that? Meet a lot of ghosts at the annual paranormal brunch on the hell mouth or something?”

Derek gave him a dourly impatient look, not deigning to answer the question. Stiles fidgeted and glared at Derek’s profile, feeling like he was missing out on some information that might be useful, if not now then later.

“So, does that mean you know what it is,” he inquired, almost hopefully as he watched Derek slide to the end of the bed and reach for his things. It would be infinitely easier to deal with this if they knew what they were up against.

Stiles mimicked the movement, reaching for his shoe, and took note of Derek’s frustrated silence. It was the kind of frustration he was becoming well acquainted with himself, of not knowing what was going on.

Knowing they really didn’t have a plan and needing something else to think about, Stiles said, “We should check out some more of the buildings in town, find some clues. Maybe we’ll get lucky and find the source of the screaming meanies. I call dibs.”

Derek had been pulling on his shoes in a determined way, deep in thought. Then he suddenly stood up, not looking at Stiles as he deliberately crossed the small space and unlocked the trap door.

“Hey, give a guy a minute,” Stiles protested as Derek flung the door open and reached up to pull himself out.

Derek feet had disappeared into the light of day when Stiles managed to scramble up, only one arm inside his hoodie and one shoe still unlaced. He stumbled under the door and caught sight of the ceiling and Derek standing over the hole in the ground that was their bunker. Stiles frowned up at him in confusion as he leaned down and, instead of helping Stiles, grabbed the door.

He had only gotten out half of Derek’s name before the door slammed shut and the light instantly went out, plunging Stiles into total darkness. He fumbled through the empty air in front of him, looking for the chain on the light bulb, but found nothing. The darkness seemed to be taking on life around him as he struggled. His mind was filling with an irrational panic that ate at the air in his lungs and he started yelling Derek’s name, pleading for help as the phantasms bore down on upon him. He slammed his palms repeatedly into the harsh metal of the trap door, voice getting louder and more panicked with each fruitless strike.

He was sure he would die there, alone and forgotten, torn apart by the shifting shapes he saw, when suddenly the metal under his fingers vanished and the bunker filled with blinding light as the trap door swung outward. Stiles could feel something pulling at him with a thousand tiny hands like many small children were trying to hold him back. He reached up desperately for the edge to pull himself out but Derek had already taken hold of him and yanked him roughly out by the arm. He was sent sprawling across the cement floor next to the hole as Derek turned back, claws out to take on whatever danger had appeared within it. He frowned though, puzzled as he surveyed the dark bunker with all his sense. There weren’t any strange scents or odd presences within their safe haven, it was entirely empty.

“There’s nothing there,” Derek stated, sounding mildly annoyed and puzzled by Stiles’s panic. He could smell Stiles’s legitimate terror and hear his adrenaline pumped heart hammering but there was nothing, as far as he could tell, that would cause it.

Stiles was panting and looked back into the dark hole in the ground that was their bunker, pupils still hugely dilated. He felt a little foolish but he was still trembling and he could feel the fading impression of those hands grabbing him. He shook it off, trying to tell himself there had been nothing there, but he was certain that nothing good would have come of him being locked in there alone.

“It was dark,” he replied lamely, voice shaking and a little higher than normal as he tried to brush it off.

Out of his shaking, fear, and shame, came a hot, volatile anger that burned along his throat the more he thought about what had just happened. He shoved himself to his feet as Derek slammed the door closed again. He got right in the werewolf’s face and shoved Derek hard in the chest with the heels of both hands as he yelled, “What the hell were you thinking?”

Derek was pushed back a step by the unexpected force of Stiles’s shove before he regained his balance and leveled a glare back at the furious human seething before him.

“Whatever’s out here wants you. It’s safer in there,” Derek stated, voice cold and logical.

“Safe,” Stiles repeated mirthlessly, “You call that safe? Locking me in a box that I can’t get out of while you run around looking for god only knows what! And if you hadn’t come back, then what? Damn it Derek!”

At this last exclamation he slammed a fist against Derek’s chest. The violence was satisfying to Stiles, taking some of the fear away, so he did it again with his other hand. He was shaking in his rage and he brought both hands up, balling them in the fabric of Derek’s shirt. He hated Derek in that second for being so stupid, almost beyond words in his fury.

Derek did not stop any of this, taking every blow and letting Stiles work through his anger with an unreadable, neutral expression. Stiles looked away and breathed out an agitated breath, trying to calm himself down. He knew Derek’s logic, knew he thought he’d been doing the right thing but he didn’t need decisions about his safety made for him.

He looked back at Derek, determined and said, trying to remain calm, “We have to stick together, Derek. We don’t know what’s going on and it doesn’t look like there’s backup coming, so we’re it. We have to trust each other, no more of this lone wolf crap, okay?”

Derek glared back at him for a moment then his hands came up and gathered Stiles’s wrists, pulling them away from his shirt. He tossed Stiles hands aside as he said, coldly, “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Derek stalked angrily toward the door and Stiles followed after him with an agitated sigh as he put his arm through the other sleeve of his jacket. The strained air between them seemed to give Derek an extra boost because he placed a hand against the crack between the sliding door and wall and shoved it aside with what looked like little effort. The rusted metal made a horrible screaming grinding sound that sent sparks flying and when Derek’s hand left it there was a bloody dent. Stiles gave it an interested half second of scrutiny before hurrying after the ruffled werewolf, who was striding toward town with a walking speed at approximately a brisk jog for a human.

That was when Stiles realized there was something weird about the weight distribution of his jacket. There had been nothing in the pockets yesterday, he knew for a fact. Now there was something though, bumping gently against Stiles as he walked. He stopped dead in his tracks, feeling the inexplicable creeping wrongness of it emanating out of his pocket.

“Derek,” Stiles said, and his tone made Derek freeze and turn, half expecting Stiles to be facing down some monster that had stopped to flash it’s fangs at him.

What he found was Stiles pulling out a cell phone from his pocket, slowly, as though it was covered in some noxious fluid. Derek frowned at it; there was something strange about it, but he couldn’t pinpoint what exactly. The device was black, unassuming, and simple with a number pad on the front under a dark screen.

“Why didn’t you use that yesterday,” Derek asked, partly annoyed but still frowning at the thing, unsure what was setting his senses off about it.

Stiles caught his eye with a significant look as he said, “I didn’t have this yesterday.”

Those words sent a shiver down his spine and understanding slammed home as Derek’s eyes shot back to the cell phone lying innocently in Stiles palm. _That wasn’t Stiles’s cell phone_. Derek couldn’t believe it had taken him so long to notice, he had seen Stiles use his phone on a number of occasions.

The thing in his hand now was eerie. It didn’t smell like anything but Stiles’ pocket, as though it hadn’t even gone through manufacturing before it found its mysterious way to them. Stiles shivered involuntarily and Derek couldn’t have said why, but his instincts were screaming at him to get the phone away from Stiles.

“Stop touching that thing,” Derek demanded, rushing to Stiles and swatting it away from him as though it would start spitting acid at any second.

The phone hit the ground and bounced before skidding across the asphalt and stopping a few feet away with its black face turned toward the sky. Derek and Stiles stared at it, waiting for something to happen, tense as though it would grow fangs and fly at them.

The black screen suddenly lit up and it vibrated a few centimeters to the left as it rang a default tone into the still, silent air. They both jumped and Stiles swore. They stared at it for another ring before Derek’s face grew grim and he took a step toward it. Stiles, without any thought as to why he was doing it, grabbed Derek’s arm to hold him back.

Derek looked at the hand restraining his arm then at Stiles, whose gaze flicked to him for a second then back to the ringing phone. He let go as though he realized what he was doing but he still looked shaken as another ring sent the device vibrating across the uneven surface.

Stiles licked his lips and asked, trying not to show how nervous he was, trying to keep his voice cool and professional, like his father’s, “Can you see who it is?”

Derek tilted his head to get around the glare on the screen and the word “unknown” flashed up at him. He shook his head.

“Maybe it’s Scott,” Stiles said, distractedly hopeful, saying it mostly so he didn’t have to think of any other nightmarish possibilities.

“It’s not Scott,” Derek said grimly, certain. He stepped toward it again before Stiles could get together enough wit to stop him again.

“Wait Der-” But Stiles words were cut off as the sole of Derek’s shoe came down hard on the plastic casing. Shards of phone flew out from all directions, skittering across the asphalt.

The silence afterward felt unnatural, filled with a sense of dispelling unease, as though the evil had been contained in the small space of the phone and now was set free to wreak havoc on them from anywhere. It was an unsettling feeling and the sense of being watched, stalked grew.

The tension chaffed at Stiles and made him angrier than the situation logically demanded as he yelled, “What the hell did you do that for?”

Derek turned to him and raised an eyebrow at him as he asked, “You wanted to answer it?”

Stiles worked his jaw for a second as though he was going to answer yes but then he gave a tiny shake of his head. He wouldn’t have touched that again for anything.

“Something is seriously wrong with this place,” Stiles said, spooked and absent minded.

“Really,” Derek asked, voice dripping with sarcasm as he turned on Stiles. He was irrationally angry too, part worry and part misplaced blame.

“Sarcasm? Not helping right now,” Stiles bit back.

There was a loud crash from down one of the streets to their right and both Stiles and Derek turned toward it and grabbed the other’s arm at the same time in an instinctive gesture of protectiveness.


	5. Chapter 5

They stood for a second, straining their senses for signs of danger. Derek relaxed first, not sensing anyone or anything else moving around and Stiles followed suit. They caught each other’s eye before quickly letting go of the other’s arm as they looked back toward the source of the noise.

Derek started forward, moving cautiously but still confidently toward an office building that seemed to be where the crash had originated. Stiles followed close behind, keeping an eye on their surroundings, feeling an unwelcome prickling on the back of his neck as though he were being watched.

It wasn’t a large office but it had held at least thirty people in cubicles crammed into the middle of the room. There were doors along the sides that probably lead to break rooms, bathrooms, and meeting rooms. It had the unsettling silence and stillness of a place that should be bustling, like a school after hours, made worse by the wreckage of the room. Some of the cubicles had been knocked down and were hanging into the walkways between, there were papers strewn everywhere like a harsh wind had swept through the place, and the far bank of windows, which was the only source of light in the room, was splattered with blood that cast a red stripe down half the room.

Everything about the place set the pair on edge as they crept along the wall toward a panel of light switches. Half the switches had been smashed by what looked like a stray printer, ink dried down the wall. Stiles reached for a switch at the opposite end but Derek caught his wrist and gave him a look that clearly said he wasn’t to touch. Stiles was about to say something about how he could turn on a light by himself when he noticed that one of them was buzzing and sparking with escaped electricity.

“Chivalry isn’t dead,” Stiles muttered sarcastically, but allowed Derek to push him away from the hazard.

They stayed close at first, creeping among the wreckage of someone’s nine to five that had been torn to pieces. Anything in the office could have made the crashing noise they’d heard outside. There were smashed printers and computers littering the floor and broken lights overhead. One heavy wooden door was torn in half, part of it still attached to the hinges, hanging forlornly.  Everything about the place was weird, though that had become a common theme recently.

Stiles found a bloody boot beside the red stained window but otherwise there was nothing to indicate it was even human blood except Derek’s grim nod when Stiles had asked. There were no bodies and, besides the wreckage, there was no evidence of what had happened. None of it was giving them any clues. There wasn’t a single claw mark anywhere or any indication that a monster had been through on a rampage like Stiles kept expecting. Were it not for the boot and the blood, Stiles would almost have guessed that the holiday party had gotten a little too rowdy.

After they’d been searching awhile and coming up empty, they started to drift slowly to opposite ends of the room. With the frustrating lack of new information, Stiles mind started to drift too. He was going over that morning in his head, as though it could give him some new insight as to where the phone had come from or who was on the other end. The more he thought about it though, the less he wanted to know the answer.

Stiles reached absently for a drawer in one of the desks that was as mundane as the last six he’d tried. He’d pulled it halfway out when he was brought out of his spiraling thoughts by a loud hammer coming from behind a nice wooden door to what looked like it hid a conference room. It stopped after a second and Stiles called out, “Hello?”

It was silent for a few second more as Stiles watched carefully then the hammering continued in a volley as though someone was pounding their fists against it trying to get out.

“Derek,” he yelled across the room, “There’s someone in there.”

He threw caution to the wind, raced over, grabbed the handle, and pushed it down. He felt the lock disengage but when he pushed against the wood it didn’t open. The hammering had stopped again. There was a half formed narrative in Stiles’s head that made him feel feverish with hope. He was sure that when he opened that door he'd find a person knocking, a survivor. They'd help the poor soul and in return they could finally get some answers.

“Get back,” he told whoever was on the other side, “I think it’s stuck.”

He barely registered Derek tramping through the wreckage behind him. He might have been saying something, Stiles wasn’t sure. It registered in the back of his mind that Derek wasn’t acting right for their having just found someone living, he was too wary. Stiles was single minded at this point though and ignored it, only concentrating on getting through that door. He drew back the full length of his arm to gather some momentum, still holding down the handle.

“Stiles, stop,” he heard Derek yell urgently over his shoulder.

It was too late though, Stiles had already thrown his weight against the door. It sprung open with a brittle crack and Stiles would have fallen through into the room had Derek not grabbed his arm and pulled him back. Stiles stumbled but caught himself using Derek’s iron grip on him to anchor himself.

When he was steady, he looked over Derek’s shoulder and froze in shocked horror. The walls were splattered with blood in long flowing slashes that oddly resembled angel wings. It would have been beautiful had it not been so horrific. The polished, hardwood tabletop in the middle of the room had long bloody scratches in it and one of the chairs was torn to bits, foam strewn haphazardly around, soaking in the long dried blood. The nice shag carpet was stuck up in places where the blood had dried it into rises and valleys where people had once been. That was the only sign of them though, crushed carpeting and blood outlines.

Stiles felt his stomach turn over and had to look away, willing back the black spots at the edge of his vision and his light head. He pulled from Derek’s grip to put his hands on his knees and gag. He’d seen blood before, he’d seen death and carnage, but it wasn’t a sight he would ever get used to. Derek stayed protectively in front of him, surveying the bloodshed darkly, not relaxing his defensive posture.

“Why,” Stiles asked around heavy breaths, trying to control his stomach, “didn’t you tell me there was so much b-blood in there?”

“It wasn’t there before,” Derek answered puzzled and wary.

Stiles frowned at Derek and straightened, taking a deep breath and steeling himself before looking back at the room. Other than the blood and scratches, there didn’t seem to be anything particularly wrong with it. There was that feeling though, the one that had hung around the phone and the presence from the night before, an intrinsic wrong that permeated every surface and undulated outward like it was trying to infect everything around it. It didn’t make sense, Derek should have smelled that much blood from a mile off. Stiles couldn’t remember smelling it before either even though he'd been pressed against and although his sense of smell was markedly weaker than a werewolf’s, there was no missing that. The stench was making him feel sick all over again. Something this strong should have flooded the whole building by now and attracted a lot of attention but it seemed untouched by insects or animals and the smell had certainly not gotten out of the room, despite the fact that it was well ventilated.

“We need to go,” Derek informed him, apparently having had enough of the horrifying enigma of a room.

Stiles wanted to agree with him, he didn't want to be anywhere near the gruesome display before him again for the rest of his life, but they weren't any closer to understanding this and if he left now he wasn't going to come back, not for anything. His eyes were glued to it and he was searching, trying not to breathe through his nose. Logic was a good combat to emotional responses, so Stiles tried to be logical, look at this like his father would, and zeroed in on the facts to find a question they might be able to answer.

“What was knocking on the door? Something had to have made that sound, we should-” but Stiles stopped talking when he caught the grim and cautious look on Derek’s face. That wasn’t a look he wanted to see directed at him, not ever. But the words that came after it were even worse.

“I didn’t hear any knocking,” Derek said slowly and clearly.


	6. Chapter 6

The oppressively dark office building loomed behind them malevolently, paranoia making it feel more dangerous than before. The shadows at this time of day were so few but those that clung to the empty structures around them seemed somehow darker, like someone had filled in the spaces with ink. Stiles wanted nothing more in the world at that moment than to curl up on the couch at home and have his dad throw a blanket over him, nudging his feet out of the way so he could sit down.

There was a chill on Stiles’s skin like a living thing, crawling in and out of each pore to steal its warmth. It hadn’t faded, even when they emerged into the warm light of the day outside. He shivered but dismissed it along with the trembling in his legs as he took a deep, calming breath. Though he had let go of Stiles as soon as they were back on the relative safety of the street again, Derek hadn’t moved more than a few inches from him and was gently shepherded him away from the office. Stiles didn’t bother to check where they were going because anywhere that wasn’t this place sounded good to him.

He could feel that one patch of warmth from Derek’s skin where he’d gripped Stiles’s arm smothered slowly by the clammy cold. The chilly discomfort was eating at the back of his mind even as he tried to think, not for the first time, how to get home. The desire was a widening chasm inside his chest and he could feel the storm of incoherent misery and hopelessness that awaited him if he wasn’t careful with it.

Stiles’s hands wrapped around his body to try and conserve warmth as he shivered again, feeling colder still. He stumbled, not seeing the curb he’d been approaching and almost fell into the street before he caught himself. The sunlight off a squat black town car across the street blinded Stiles for a second as he took a few steadying steps, trying to regain some semblance of balance.

The idea hit him as he glared at the parked cars lined up bumper to bumper in disrepair on the other side of the street, reflecting sunlight mockingly at him. He forgot the cold for a second and felt his energy partially return with the hope of escape.

“Hey, you know these cars all over town,” he asked Derek rhetorically, turning to him and gesturing, “There’s got to be enough parts between them to make one run. We could fix up one of these babies, run over the thing from the black lagoon, and then gun it home.”

Derek dropped his hand back to his side from where it had been hovering in the air ready to steady Stiles if he needed it. He was watching the young man with some disquiet as he responded absently, casting a bare half a glance at the cars, “I think it’s too easy. If they wanted to keep us here they wouldn’t have left any of this in working condition.”

“Well then Mr. Positivity,” Stiles said with scathing sarcasm, “do you have a better plan?”

The day was wearing on Stiles and he felt like he’d been sitting in a freezer for a few hours with how cold he was, none of which was doing his nerves any good. His voice was shaking with his trembles which seemed to be becoming worse with each passing second, though Stiles was doing his best to keep it at bay. Derek’s concern wasn’t helping either, the werewolf had been perfectly willing to leave him behind earlier and the contrast now was bothering him more than the situation warranted.

He made to turn away from Derek and continue in their original direction before he could well and truly blow up in his face, but his world suddenly tipped. The ground was becoming more vertical and he could hear Derek call his name in alarm. The last thing he was aware of before the cold and the blackness at the edges of his vision claimed him was Derek’s arms holding him up and the stylized license plate on a crimson muscle car reading, “GOT U NOW”.

Derek was yelling Stiles’s name but the now sickly looking human was completely unresponsive and limp in his arms. His skin had the pasty chill of a dead man and his breathing was shallow, heartbeat growing faint. He pulled Stiles’s to his chest to try to warm him, glancing around like he might find someone to help him there. The street was completely empty, the dark shop windows seeming to mock his helplessness.

The bottom dropped out of Derek’s stomach as he heard Stiles’s heart stutter, like a dying engine, and stop altogether. He was muttering the single word, “No,” under his breath over and over as he laid Stiles out on the pavement.

CPR training guided his hands as Derek shifted Stiles’s limbs unceremoniously out of the way of his chest and violently pulled the offending fabric of his jacket and shirt aside to see what he was doing. He lifted his hands off Stiles’s to reposition himself better to start compressions when suddenly Stiles had taken in a gasp and was screaming with the full force of his lungs. His heart was pounding again, double time, and his back arched as he released one long howl of agony. Derek almost fell back and clamped his hands over his ears at the sudden, abrasive sound. He shot a glance around as though he might find someone hurting Stiles but the street was as empty as it had ever been. There was a pressure in the air though that had Derek’s instincts on high alert.

He grabbed Stiles to move him and found his skin was feverish with a sudden heat. Then, a silence more deafening than the farthest reaches of the universe fell as Stiles stopped screaming abruptly. The sudden extremes threw Derek for a loop and he just stared as Stiles’s tensed muscled slowly relaxed and he became limp again.

The air had cleared some of that oppressive sensation but Derek was still searching the street with all his senses, feeling an unknown threat lurking around every corner. He recovered himself and repositioned Stiles carefully before running as fast as he could back toward the warehouse, the only place they had found safety yet in their little hell.

 

Stiles could have been underwater for the noises he was hearing, muffled voices and a faint buzzing. His eyelids were impossibly heavy but he needed to open them, needed to know what was happening. It was very hard work, almost more energy than he had but he managed to crack them open the smallest fraction so he looked through the blurry lines of his eyelashes slicing his vision apart. The only thing he could make out was a vertical silver line across his vision. His head was hurting with the effort to hold his eyes open and process the perplexing data his senses were taking in. Through the muffled nothingness of his hearing, Stiles could have sworn he heard someone shouting Scott’s name just before he let the promise of oblivion take him under again.

 

Derek spent most of his time keeping Stiles alive. It was hard work, Stiles was a limp doll some of the time and a thrashing, screaming mess at others. When daylight came he took Stiles out of the bunker and just before sunset they returned. He kept Stiles clean and fed with supplies from around the houses near them and tried his best to regulate his temperature. His body spiked unexpectedly between burning heat and icy chill and Derek just barely kept up.

He’d taken to sleeping with his head on Stiles’s chest so he could hear his heartbeat and feel his temperature at all times and be woken if anything happened. But, between changing out the cold compress for blankets and the unexpected screaming, he didn’t get more than a broken two hours of sleep a night. So, exhausted and on edge, Derek was sure he was hallucinating it when Stiles started to stir.

It was about midnight and Derek had just finished ringing cold water out of the cloth he laid on Stiles’s forehead when he heard a groan and the mattress shifting behind him. He dropped the cloth back into the water and spun back to look at Stiles whose face was scrunching up as he woke slowly.

“Stiles,” Derek asked watching him carefully, allowing himself to hope.

Stiles let his eyes open with maddening slowness. There was a dull look to them at first, like he wasn't all there, then his eyes started to focus. He glanced over at Derek who had black circles under his eyes and a look of near desperation on his face. Stiles blinked slowly up at him, letting the information settle into his head and slot into place with his last memory. He frowned up at Derek, confused.

“What,” he started, throat raw and voice barely a croak, but he was cut off by a round of dry coughing. Derek was there instantly with a bottle of water pressed to his lips. Stiles grabbed it from him and drank the whole thing in record time.

He flopped back down and breathed heavily for a minute with his eyes shut. He felt a hand on his face and startled, opening his eyes again to find Derek hovering over him. Derek, satisfied that Stiles’s temperature was back to normal, leaned his back tiredly against the cement bench behind him with a sigh. He seemed calmed some by Stiles’s consciousness but every movement Stiles made was carefully tracked as he sat up.

“What happened,” Stiles asked, his voice rough but not the miserable, nearly soundless thing it had been a minute ago.

“I don’t know,” Derek admitted, shutting his eyes and relaxing further as though Stiles’s voice was a soothing balm, “Your temperature’s been irregular and you’ve been unconscious but I don’t know why.”

Stiles’s eyes drifted off Derek to the cool gray bench next to him. There was a package of bottled water whose plastic had been shredded. Most of the bottles were sitting empty in a pile on one side next to several sliced open cans beside a line of unopened nonperishable. He turned his head and the more he looked the more supplies he saw; blankets, towels, clothing, a couple of open first aid kits, buckets, disinfectant, food in all manner of containers. There was enough stuff here to last two people a long time and he knew Derek hadn't gathered all that in one day, not with the way he looked.

He glanced back at Derek’s worn state and cleared his throat apprehensively before asking, “How long ago was that?”

Derek’s eyes opened to stare absently at the ceiling. They flicked back and forth, tracing across the low monochrome structure over their heads without seeing it, like he was tracking back through the days in his head. He was quiet for a long minute and Stiles almost thought he wasn't going to answer when he finally said, “About three days.”


	7. Chapter 7

Stiles woke groggily with his face crushed against the mattress and an uncomfortable inability to draw in as much air as he needed. There was a great weight across his back that was, of course, Derek. He was draped horizontally across Stiles’s lower back so their bodies made a t shape as they overlapped. Derek’s head hung a little off Stiles’s side and one of his arms was pooled on the mattress under his head, neither body part actually touching, and his other arm was curled next to him in a relaxed fist on Stiles’s shoulder blades.

“Derek,” Stiles grumbled in a long moan, sleepily shoving at Derek’s side, “get off.”

Derek mumbled something back that sounded like it could have been a threat but both were still too far into sleep to really grasp, let alone articulate, complex concepts like inflicting bodily injury.

“You weight a ton,” Stiles moaned, his complaint nagging Derek into action lest he be forced further into wakefulness. He grudgingly resettled, sliding off Stiles’s back to curl up with his own back pressed flush against Stiles’s side. Stiles didn’t even think about it as he adjusted to Derek’s position, lifting an arm for him to slot himself under and letting it settle across Derek’s shoulders. Stiles wiggled himself into a more comfortable position, turning his head the other direction, still lying on his stomach but now with full, uninhibited use of his lungs.

They’d both almost dropped off to sleep again when Stiles foot kicked out involuntarily and caught on the strap of a bag. There was a resounding crash as one of the glass jars of provisions they had brought into the bunker smashed against the cement, dislodging from its resting place by Stiles foot.

“Stiles,” Derek groaned, disgruntled by the interruption.

Stiles reluctantly raised his head to peer sleepily over at the mess on the floor that had splashed reddish purple jam across the bench and part of the mattress.

“Great,” Stiles moaned loudly, throwing his head back into the mattress and mumbling, “I really liked that stuff.”

Derek grudgingly opened one eye to glance over at the mess and saw Stiles’s foot still caught in the strap, ready to take the entire load of glass jars down onto the floor. He huffed an annoyed breath as he extricated himself from under Stiles’s arm and sat up, reaching over Stiles and ordering him gruffly, “Stay still.”

Derek’s hand flashed out swiftly and caught Stiles foot as he tried to put weight on it to see behind himself, the canvas sliding precariously toward the edge. Derek cast an annoyed look back at Stiles who shrugged innocently. Derek turned back with a shake of his head and made quick work of untangling Stiles foot and dropping it unceremoniously back onto the mattress. He maneuvered the bag down the bench and tossing all the loose straps on top and out of harm’s way while Stiles turned himself over and sat up, giving up on the idea of sleep.

“Knew we shouldn’t have put those so close to the bed,” Stiles said, a yawn marring his words halfway through.

“Maybe if someone wasn’t such a klutz it wouldn’t be an issue,” Derek shot back pointedly.

Stiles fought the extreme desire to stick his tongue out at Derek like he was in elementary school again, it was a close thing, but Derek wasn’t looking anyway, going about his usual routine. Stiles slid across the mattress and followed suit, grabbing a shoe and sleeve to yank toward himself.

“So what are we doing tonight, Brain,” Stiles muttered sarcastically under his breath, changing his voice with the shift in character, “Same thing we do every night Pinky, try to figure out what’s trying to kill us this time.”

“We will,” Derek started petulantly, pulling his laces with a finality that accented his words perfectly, “after you clean up your mess.”

Stiles glared at the spill like it had done him a personal wrong, wondering if there was even a way to get that stain out. He threw the glass bits into an empty bucket and soaked up what he could of the jam but it was stubbornly not coming up.

“Do you think the hardware store would have anything to remove stains,” Stiles asked, not because he actually thought they would.

They were both tense this morning, not only because of the unpleasant wake up call. It had been over a week since Stiles had woken up from his three day death spell coma thing and they hadn't found anything useful in the way of clues to figure out what happened or how or why they were here. They’d been systematically eliminating houses and buildings within their small sphere of a world with nothing to show for it. It was all starting to blur together in Stiles’s mind; another living room with a chair turned over or a smashed coffee table, another thrown office, another little kitchen with food to raid, another dark maroon stain flaking off the walls and floor. They were both waiting for the other shoe to drop and the stress of nothing was a tight cord of tension that was ready to break any minute.

It was a testament to how much they were both craving new scenery that Derek didn’t object to the hardware store idea. Maybe nothing to get stains out, but they would find something useful there.

When they’d climbed out into daylight again and fallen into step with each other, as they did every morning, Stiles threw his arms behind his head and started to whistle some annoying pop song that had been everyone’s ringtone for awhile. He wasn't paying a lot of attention where they were going until they rounded the corner into town and noticed that Derek was subtly steering him to the far side of the street even though the hardware store was on the street side closest to their warehouse. He frowned questioningly at Derek, who ignored the look or didn't see it.

They had never gone this direction before, Stiles realized, having always gone left instead of right at the town center. Stiles leaned around Derek to try and see what he was trying to avoid. There were several unassuming little shops on that side of the street, just like the rest of the little downtown section. Nothing about the shop fronts seemed any more unusual than the rest of this giant question mark of a town, a window smashed every here and there, the occasional door hanging open, and the general air of abandonment and panic hanging around them.

His eyes kept falling back to a quaint little dress shop, the kind of place Lydia would have enjoyed strolling through. Its door was almost closed, only a few inches remaining between it and the frame, held open by the fabric of a powder blue dress caught and bunched under it. The dress looked like it had been grabbed in a desperate attempt to keep someone from being drug out and was ripped at the bottom where the fabric had failed to hold up against the pull of the assailant. That, sadly, wasn’t an unusual sight in town either; the strange part was that bits of the fabric trailed to the gaping blackness of the door to the tan building next door. Stiles stopped in his tracks, his instincts screaming at him that this was important.

Derek stopped a few steps ahead of him and turned to look back at him, but Stiles was already jogging across the street. Stiles heard Derek calling after him but didn’t listen, concentrating on the open door. It was a small butcher shop and Stiles couldn’t help but feel the sick irony in that. The closer he got the more he saw and the more he felt his gut clenching. There were scratches on the door and bloody streaks where the sunlight fell on the linoleum just inside the door, evidence of someone literally trying to claw their way to freedom.

Stiles eyes adjusted to the low lighting from the windows and scanned the floor then the counter across the room. Part of a shelf behind it had been torn away, wood splinters littering the floor behind the counter, the debris leading toward the back. Stiles followed the trail, cataloging everything he saw, building the macabre event in his head out of the evidence.

He could feel Derek behind him, hesitating as he stepped into the dark butcher shop. He wanted them to run, now, didn’t want Stiles here, but he could feel that Stiles would not be drug away now. The human had a tension in his shoulders and a thick, volatile air about him that suggested if he were touched he would snap. That didn’t stop Derek from trying to talk him down though.

“Let’s go,” Derek said, still lingering in the shafts of light through the window, his skin crawling, “This isn’t a place for us.”

Stiles paused at the corner that lead back toward a  heavy steel door that Stiles could only imagine lead to an enormous, industrial freezer, and glanced over his shoulder at Derek. He was tenser than Stiles had seen him in days, and that was saying something. He looked ready to shift at any second, a cornered predator prepared to lash out to defend itself.

“What happened here,” Stiles asked, voice hushed as though he didn’t want to disturb the dust and spirits lingering, still but ominous, around them. It was a question that he had asked often since they’d gotten here but he felt very close to an answer right now.

Derek took the opportunity to cross the room and try to herd Stiles out without touching him. Stiles stubbornly stood his ground though and stared Derek down with determination, wanting an answer.

Derek sighed in irritation, looking away from Stiles, but his eyes were drawn to the freezer door instead. It sent a wave of unease down his spine and he glanced away from it, but Stiles had seen the path of his eyes and was staring at the door. In an unexpected motion, between one heartbeat irregular heartbeat and the next, Stiles had moved toward the door.

“Stiles, don’t,” Derek yelled warningly, reaching out to catch his shoulder, but it was too late. Stiles had already grabbed the door and yanked it wide open.

He stopped dead, frozen. Stiles usual riotous chaos of motion ceased ominously and even the wind stood still as he stared. The space was filled with bodies, stacked on top of one another, mouths agape and limbs flung about as they had been when the poor souls had been trying to make their escape from whatever horrible death had claimed them. There were too many to count but Stiles’ would have bet every cent of his college fund that they were the inhabitants of the town, that there was one of them for every abandoned bedroom and desolate meeting place.

Morbidly, Stiles cataloged their injuries in his head. They fit in the space only because of it's size and the fact that they had all been melted together as they were thrown in, flesh melding into each other and stuck to the walls and rows of hooks. Most of them bore long gouge marks all over their bodies to accompany their burned flesh and broken bones. His eyes traveled slowly over the bodies and onto the walls where the victims had left bloody gashes in their attempt to claw their way out. His eyes drifted to the door swung open next to him and found the marks there as well. His stare settled on the remains of a nail embedded in the hard surface, broken off from one of the poor, unsuspecting townsfolk.

“Derek,” Stiles asked, throat dry and hoarse, not looking away, “What did this?”

“I don’t know,” Derek said solemnly. He had not moved from the position he’d stopped in, hands hanging at his sides and face grave.

“You’ve known about this the whole time, haven’t you,” Stiles asked, monotone, already knowing the answer. He was still and calm like a battlefield before the first shot is fired.

“Yes,” Derek’s answer was quiet and reluctant, not looking at Stiles.

Stiles nodded because, of course, Derek had known, probably the moment they had stepped out of the warehouse. “And you didn’t think,” Stiles’ voice got angrier with every word he spoke through his gritted teeth, fists clenched until he was screaming at Derek, “to let me in on the fact that the whole town was dead inside a giant freezer?!” Stiles rounded on Derek at the word dead and shouted in his face, irrationally furious with him for not sharing this tidbit of information.

He threw his fist into Derek’s chest, pounding on his sternum as he shouted, “You didn’t bother to tell me that there was a whole town slaughtered across the street? We’ve been here this long and you just let me gallop around hoping they all just moved away? That they might be happy out there somewhere when they’d actually…”

Stiles was breathing hard and he couldn’t come up with anymore words, the horror of it all hitting him and constricting his throat. He didn’t realize he was sobbing until Derek put a hand on his shoulder. He didn’t know why he did it, but Stiles turned his face away from the freezer and fell against Derek’s chest, feeling helpless, vision blurry with tears. He shut his eyes tight, the image of carnage he’d paid witness to, burned into his retinas.

Derek stiffened at the unexpected closeness for a second but relaxed and let his hands fall around Stiles’ back, encircling him in warmth. Stiles shook violently and he gripped at the edge of Derek’s coat with one hand like it was a lifeline.

Derek reached behind him and closed the door with one smooth shove. It banged shut with a final sort of sound, like the shutting of an old coffin lid. That sound made Stiles shake harder for a second, but he was too drained to react further, burying his face closer to Derek as his emotions spilled out of him in an endless stream.

It took awhile but Derek started rubbing soothing circles into Stiles’s back and after longer he rested his head on top of Stiles’s and closed his eyes, taking his own comfort from Stiles’s scent as it drowned out the smell of death that permeated the building. They stood there so long the shadow of the building opposite crawled all the way across the street and ate up the light filtering through the window until there was only a small strip of gold lying across the dust. Eventually Stiles calmed down enough that he was just leaning tiredly against Derek, totally spent.

They both disengaged and turned, at exactly the same time, as though they had agreed upon it despite their lack of words, back toward their underground shelter. Derek had a hand on Stiles’s back, guiding him, and Stiles leaned his shoulder against Derek’s as they walked, never breaking contact.

When they were back in the secure little bunker and Derek had locked the trap door, Stiles fell onto the bed, numb. Derek watched him for a moment before joining him and letting Stiles lean against him once more.

“When I find out what did this,” Stiles said, voice tired and shattered but deadly determined, “I’m going to kill it.”

Derek said nothing to this pronouncement but Stiles could feel his silent agreement.


	8. Chapter 8

Stiles had developed a mania. Every morning for two days straight Stiles would wake at dawn, having hardly slept through nightmares, and drag a worn out Derek after him to scour the town for more clues. They tore houses apart, taking anything useful and documenting carefully what they saw on the wall of a model home not far from the warehouse. They were finding the same maddening amount of nothing as they had before though.

Stiles gave the butcher shop a dark look every time he caught sight of it. Derek refused to let him go back and Stiles didn’t try very hard to persuade him otherwise. To say that Derek was worried about Stiles’s mental state was an understatement. The dark circles under his eyes looked like they were trying to take over his cheeks and he refused to eat more than a few bites of anything. His erratic state seemed to worsen hourly. Derek didn’t know what to do for it though, so he stayed close and tried to make sure Stiles didn’t do anything too ill advised.

On the third morning, they found the small personal library in someone’s basement under padlock. The library was untouched and every book and surface was coated in a layer of dust years thick. There was a barred window that lit the space in a dull orange glow through the swirling motes making patterns above the abandoned mess of papers.

Seeing the fevered look in Stiles’s eyes, Derek broke the lock off without prompting and stood aside as Stiles shoved his way through the door and set upon the small ten by fifteen foot space like a tempest. Stiles grabbed the first sheet within his reach and tore through it, throwing it aside when he deemed it useless, and beginning again with the next book or page he found. Derek set to work more slowly in the opposite corner under the buzzing florescent light over their heads. The dust irritated their eyes and the pages were brittle like they’d fall apart if handled incorrectly.

It was becoming more obvious with each volume that there was nothing to be found and the padlock was the product of a paranoid individual protecting a collection of original documents and prints from prying hands. In Derek’s discard pile were several old cook books, an anthology of children’s stories, and a rambling diary chronicling nothing more interesting than laundry day in April 1973. Derek decided he wasn’t going to be the one to suggest it was a wasted attempt though as he watched the extreme, single-minded focus with which Stiles raked the pages for information.

They skimmed mundane volumes for several hours until they’d pulled every book in the small collection. Stiles stood in the middle of the mess they’d made, like the eye of a hurricane, holding a single book in his furiously trembling hand.

“There’s nothing here,” Stiles shouted angrily, throwing the book with all his might at the opposite wall. The dull brown hard cover hit the wall with a loud thud and ricocheted off onto the industrial looking speckled carpet.

Derek paid it no mind, watching Stiles fume with the same wary, sharp look he’d been following Stiles with since he’d discovered the bodies hidden in the butcher shop. Stiles knew he’d been keeping close tabs on him since he’d woken up, every movement drawing his eyes immediately, but this look was different.

“What,” Stiles snapped at him, advancing as he caught Derek watching him again. His body was tense and he was looking for an outlet.

Holding his ground, Derek said, calmly, “You’ve been acting strange.”

“I’ve been acting strange,” Stiles repeated incredulously, throwing his arms out for emphasis, “Have you looked around this place? Strange and messed up are kind of in its definition. I’m the one acting normally here.”

“You haven’t been ‘acting normally’ since you woke up,” Derek countered, quoting Stiles with a bite of impatience at odds with the forced calm in the rest of his words.

“I don’t feel like I ever woke up,” Stiles practically yelled, shifting around on his feet, the challenge gone, replaced with agitation, “It feels like we’re living in a nightmare.”

Derek watched Stiles with softer eyes as he lost the ability to look at Derek. His fears were swirling around his head in a gale so loud Derek could almost hear it. Stiles didn’t talk about it, but he was afraid for the people he loved on the outside and it had grown worse since they’d found actual corpses.

“This whole place is just wrong,” Stiles insisted to the shelf off to his left, “You’re the werewolf here, aren’t you supposed to have some kind of connection with nature or something? Can’t you feel it?”

Stiles’s eyes were getting more and more clouded with each word he spoke as the fears broke their barrier and the thunder of them rushing out to crush him was almost a physical thing. Derek could hear the subtle uptick in the already speedy rhythm of Stiles’s heart and the catch in his breathing that meant only one thing.

“Stiles,” Derek said to get his attention, grabbing his left hand. Stiles looked up at him, shocked out of his head for a second. Derek held his eyes, willing him to stay in the moment and not look away.

“Breathe,” Derek instructed calmly as he placed Stiles’s palm on his own chest and breathed deliberately under the pressure.

Stiles’s eyes widened as he gasped in a breath on impulse, not having noticed the attack starting. His left hand flew up to his throat in a shaky motion as he worked to pull air in. Derek held Stiles’s other hand in place on his chest and breathed evenly. Derek ignored it as Stiles’s fingers dug into his ribcage to keep himself steady.

He was surprised it had taken this long for everything to really hit Stiles like this. He waited patiently until Stiles had regained himself and his fingers went slack under Derek’s palm. Neither of them moved though. The only sound was their breathing, a single overlapping thing until Stiles started to lose the rhythm again.

“What if they’re dead,” Stiles asked, the words barely breathed out through numb lips.

Derek knew exactly who he meant and the faces of his pack flashed across his mind’s eye. It was the first time either of them had speculated about the world outside. They’d both been thinking it, but this was different. The words, the possibility, made the air in the room seem heavier and harder to move in.

Derek bit his cheek to stop the thoughts of carnage from running rampant in his head as he’d been trying to keep them from doing. He remembered as much as Stiles about their capture, nothing, but he knew memories could be altered and anything could have happened.

He shook his head as he said, firmly, “They’re not.”

“How can you know that,” Stiles asked in such a monotone voice it almost wasn’t a question. His eyes were fixed on the floor and he seemed rooted to the spot like the idea could only be talked about in exactly that position.

“Because they’re strong,” Derek answered simply and it was the truth. He let go of Stiles’s hand at last, like that closed the issue. His own hand fell to his side but Stiles’s remained on his chest, just over his heart. It did not occur to Derek to shove it away.

Stiles met his eyes at last and he looked somewhere between challenging and pleading as he asked, “What if it’s stronger?”

Derek closed his eyes as he took a deep breath and Stiles couldn’t tell what he was thinking, but in that moment he could see the weight of it all on Derek’s shoulders, new and fresh. There was usually something there that changed the slope of his shoulders, some guilt and responsibility that was becoming lighter the more he carried it, but this was new and uncertain.

He didn’t know what he was expecting Derek to say, but when his eyes opened again he wasn’t looking at Stiles and he just said, “It’s getting late,” and stepped back so Stiles's hand fell limply away.


	9. Chapter 9

Stiles wasn’t sure what he was seeing. They were in another of the houses in town, a spacious three floor family home with a small unfinished basement and a walkway on the second floor that overlooked the large living room. They’d been through more houses in the past few days than he could count and each one left him more frustrated than the last. He didn’t know what they were looking for at this point and, though he’d started eating properly again, he still wasn’t sleeping well. So when he saw it, he was almost sure, for a second, that it was a hallucination born of his desperation for answers and his exhaustion.

There was a figure at the other end of the hallway where it came to a T, backlit by the picture window so it was nothing but a dark, humanoid silhouette. He couldn’t make out much of it. It’s limbs seemed small because of the way the light shone so they were mere sticks on its slim body and the same play of light rendered it almost formless, an androgynous spot of solid shadow. He stopped and it stopped. He could feel it looking at him; its knees bent a little like it was ready to run but otherwise relaxed. He watched it for a second then took a slow step forward almost expecting the figure to disappear as just another of the house’s minimalist modern decorations. It started walking again in a brisk but unhurried fashion out of Stiles’s rectangle of vision at the end of the hall.

Stiles legs kicked into gear and he raced down the hallway trying to cut the distance between him and whoever or whatever was going down the adjoining hallway.

“Derek, there’s something here,” Stiles yelled as he tore around the corner and barely caught a flash of something disappearing into a shadowed opening in the wall that Stiles guessed was another room.

Stiles sprinted the few feet down the new hall and almost rounded the corner after the figure when he heard Derek yelling warningly from the end of the previous hallway, “Don’t go down there.”

The warning came too late and Stiles’s momentum flung him into the darkness and Derek lost him. He raced to the spot but instead of Stiles or an opening he found nothing but an alcove with an abstract sculpture on a dais. He couldn’t smell Stiles past that point and, even more concerning, he couldn’t sense him in the house anymore.

“Stiles,” Derek called. He turned left and right, searching in vain for something to indicate Stiles was here. He stood there helplessly, desperately hoping Stiles would answer.

Then Stiles scream of agony came from the upper floor. Derek’s head whipped around and he yelled Stiles’s name again as he ran. The screaming was coming from behind one of the bedroom doors but as soon as Derek touched the handle it stopped.

He yanked the door open to find an empty room and only the faintest trace of Stiles’s scent. Confused, Derek took a circuit of the simply decorated, powder blue guest room. There was nothing. The room was empty, just like the house. There was only that ever-present creeping sensation of being watched that plagued them everywhere they went in this town.

Stiles screams erupted again, this time from the living room. As soon as Derek could see the railing of the tiny balcony that overlooked the large space though there was silence again. Derek surveyed the space then leapt easily over the railing and landed in a crouch next to the recliner that was on its side with a gash in the fabric. Nothing about the room was different than when he’d gone through it before and there were no new scents in the house.

“Let him go,” Derek demanded of thin air, knowing that the thing watching could hear him.

As if in answer, there was a sudden series of bangs upstairs then in the hall leading to the kitchen to Derek’s right as though someone was hitting the walls with a rubber mallet. Derek turned toward each of them as they came but didn’t move yet. Then there was a heavy thump from the closet just around the corner from Derek that sounded heavy, like a human body dropping to the floor. He could hear a faint heartbeat and flew to it instantly, almost knocking himself over yanked open the white, slatted double doors.

Again, there was nothing. The heartbeat was gone and nothing but a rack of neatly ordered winter coats greeted him. Frustrated, Derek clawed the garments. Several fell to the floor in shreds, the rest hung in tatters from their hangers, some barely holding on. Derek turned from them and roared into the house with all his might. He listened for more in the silence that followed but there was nothing. His own labored breath and frantic heartbeat pounded in his ears, mocking him.

Then there were hurried footsteps behind him and he spun, ready to attack anything that came at him. He found the claws on his left hand inches away from the chest of one red hooded teenager.

Stiles had been looking over his shoulder and turned his head just in time to see he was about to be impaled. He yelled a curse as he tried to backpedal and one of his feet caught on one of the fallen coats, sliding out from under him. He passed just under Derek’s claws, getting an all too up close and personal look at them as they barely grazed past his nose. He splayed out trying to catch himself and just barely managed to keep from bashing his brains out on the hardwood floor.

It took him a second after he’d mostly stabilized himself to register who was standing over him, but when he did Stiles was decidedly annoyed.

“What the hell, Derek,” he yelled, heart pounding.

Derek was staring down at him, frozen as though he really couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Stiles frowned up at him, a little concerned. The hands that were still outstretched to attack had started trembling. A fearful vulnerability began showing candidly on his face as his eyes stopped their glowing and his features returned to human. Then he dropped to his knees like he couldn’t hold himself up anymore and in almost the same motion he pulled Stiles to his chest in a tight hug.

Stiles was so caught off guard he didn’t react. He was now staring up at the speckled ceiling like somewhere among the random pattern was the answer that would decode this incomprehensible situation. Derek’s whole body was shaking now, their proximity making the both of them quake with it.

Stiles, as far as he knew, had only been running a few seconds. He’d turned his head to look back at Derek’s voice behind him as he’d run through a dark hallway after the figure. When he’d faced forward again Derek was there ready to attack anything that came through. It was a very strange jump and he had the distinct feeling that he was missing something.

So, still not processing exactly what was going on, Stiles awkwardly raised a hand to Derek’s back and asked, “What’s-” but Derek cut him off with a sharp, loud, “Stop doing that! If I say don’t go somewhere, don’t touch something, then don’t! Are you trying to get yourself-” his words were cut off suddenly by emotions as his throat constricted. Instead of trying to continue he put all of his willpower into not making another sound. He just held Stiles tighter like that would keep him safe.

“Hey, it’s okay. I’m fine. Nothing happened this time,” Stiles said quickly, still thrown off balance. He put his arms around Derek’s broad back and rubbed soothing circles into his shoulder blade like his Dad did to comfort him. It was an awkward angle with Derek hunched over on himself and holding Stiles’s torso off the floor, but he didn’t raise a complaint.

He could feel the real plea under Derek’s angry words, the fearful and desperate, _don’t leave me_. It was a fear swathed in guilt that he felt running so deep it coiled around Derek’s heart and threatened to squeeze the life out of him. Stiles could swear he could smell memories attached to that fear swirling in the air around them. They smelled like ashes and blood.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> While I might never be 100% happy with it, it's beyond time to finish this monster. So, I owe everyone a huge apology for taking my grand sweet time with this. For your patience, kind words, and amazing contributions to the Fandom, I reward you with this and the promise of the final two chapters before the end of June.
> 
> Never fear, I've had the finale written since the start, I will finish this.
> 
> Also, have you read that fantastic piece of work inspired by this one? If you like suspense and being up way too late reading terrifying and excellent work, you should.

Stiles had set up operations in the living room of a model home. The place looked like a spider web with all the strings Stiles had used to connect everything. There was still a significant chunk missing and more red string than anything else.

He was staring, puzzled, at something in the far corner when Derek entered the room with bottled water, some food, and every piece of stationary he could find the scant office one room over.

He set everything but the water down on the cheap coffee table and tapped Stiles on the shoulder with his bottle.

“They’ve been moved again,” Stiles said absently as he accepted the water.

Derek frowned as he looked over Stiles shoulder and asked, “What do you mean?”

Stiles pointed beside the hand drawn map of the town within the ash circle to at a cluster of strings that were all attached in a hodgepodge to the words that had clearly been taken from other areas. There didn’t seem to be much order to the chaos of words, but the most obvious and disturbing of them were the words “dead” and “sleep”, which sat conspicuously on top of a stack of the others like two warriors heading an army.

Derek surveyed the cluster of clues on the wall and asked, “Is anything else different?”

“Nothing as far as I can tell,” Stiles said, shaking his head. He looked at the wall for another few seconds before uncrossing his arms and sighing as he asked, pulling at straws, “Think the screaming things in the middle of the night like to play morbid pranks?”

He turned to face Derek. They were standing only a few inches apart but neither of them was bothered by the proximity.

“And cater birthdays,” Derek threw out sarcastically, feeling the answer to everything so close but so unattainable.

The corner of Stiles mouth quirked at the stab of humor then his eyes clouded over again. He moved past Derek to the stiff sofa and sat on the edge. His whole being was vibrating with tension and frustration.

Derek leaned against the phony mantle, which was the only part of the wall near him free of pins, string, or notes, and asked, even though he knew the answer, “Is it helping?”

Stiles fiddled with his water bottle before admitting, “We have nothing to go on. I thought if I put it together it would all be clearer but, other than a few moving slips of paper, which I’m not even surprised by at this point, there’s nothing new.”

“I wasn’t talking about that,” Derek said quietly, as though worried Stiles would break if he spoke too loudly.

Stiles chuckled without humor, a dead sound falling past his lips, and it was all the answer either of them needed. They lapsed into their own thoughts for a long moment. Stiles dug into the food Derek brought and Derek’s eyes traced idly over the hours and days of work Stiles had put into the wall.

“I just feel like we’re missing something,” Stiles finally burst out awhile later. He flopped onto the decorative pillows and threw his arm over his eyes, like not seeing the room would make it easier to think.

He heard the paper rustle on the coffee table near his knee. He shifted his arm enough to see Derek hanging over him a second before his palm was pressed to Stiles’s forehead. Stiles removed his arm to give Derek the full benefit of his exasperated stare down.

“Is that the only thing you can’t monitor from a distance? My temperature,” Stiles asked, somewhere between tired and annoyed.

“Not accurately,” Derek said, ignoring the pointed tone.

He shifted his hand to cup Stiles’s cheek before removing it and straightening, satisfied with his inspection for the moment. Stiles consented to this only because he knew it was a comfort to Derek, if nothing else. Since almost losing him to a phantom hallway, Derek had made a habit of checking his temperature every few hours. After it became obvious that they weren’t going to have a Little Office of Horrors fainting relapse, Stiles thought Derek might relax a little. He’d been wrong. Stiles stood up, feeling like an invalid lying across the couch. Derek watched his movements intently, but did nothing more.

Stiles stalked away from him, trying to focus on their immediate problem. The map caught his eye, as usual. It was the largest thing on the board by half. He’d found the large square piece of grid paper in someone’s drafting room and together he and Derek had done as detailed a map as they could manage. They weren’t exactly cartographers, but it did the job. The crude squiggles indicating roads and buildings was encased in a thick black ring that stood out starkly on the white paper with its crisscrossing, pale blue lines

His gaze drifted over to the lines without seeing them until he reached the uncharted white spaces at the corners, outside the ash line. They hadn’t strayed close to the line since that first day. They didn’t know if the person who put it there had been friend or foe and, if their luck so far was any indication, they weren’t likely to find that out.

Getting past it was the most obvious option for escape, but the memory of that screech filled Stiles’s head again at the thought of what lay beyond the barrier. It had felt so huge, Stiles remembered. The oppressive air in the town had deepened with its approach and set them on edge, but Stiles couldn’t recall now if that had been the creature’s doing or the town’s resident creepiness.

Still, it was one and only solid, living being they’d come across. Though there was no longer any denying that there was something in the ash circle with them, trying to catch the feeling of a stalker was much harder than catching a real beast. The thing out there was a real beast and it was becoming plainer by the day that they were only getting jerked around in town by whatever lurked here.

Derek, however, wouldn’t even consent to let Stiles stand on their side of the line to get a look at whatever it was. They’d had this argument already, twice. Stiles liked to think that he knew when to pick his battles, so he’d let it go, but he was still not one for backing down. He turned back to face Derek, readying a different tactic.

Derek caught the look on his face and immediately interrupted flatly, “No.”

Stiles’s spine straightened indignantly at the sudden and exact rejection. “You don’t even know what I was-” Stiles started, trying not to sound as indignant as he felt and failing, but Derek interrupted again with the flat statement, “It was something about that thing in the woods.”

Stiles gritted his teeth and thought about denying it for a moment, just to make Derek feel bad for assuming. It sparked something cruel and fierce in Stiles’s chest that he had been fighting for days now. Harsher words that tasted like silk and poison on his tongue bubbled up, ready to tip off as soon as he opened his mouth.

But the urge passed as Stiles watched Derek, not even remotely fazed by the conversation, grab the pile of paper Stiles had yet to put up and straighten it like this talk wasn’t happening, like the decision was made and done with. It was pure busywork, hiding more denial and fear than Stiles could comprehend. He watched Derek’s shoulders, the tense muscles that never seemed to relax. He was always on a hairpin trigger here and it got worse with every strange happening.

Stiles’s anger lost its edge to empathy and as he sighed. The words died without a breath and fell away. Stiles knew what the problem really was here and it was time to stop dancing away from it.

He took his stance like he was about to go into battle and said, “I get it, okay? This stuff keeps happening to me. But you can’t just keep hovering over me until something takes me out. We can’t keep fighting blind like this.”

Derek was equally stubborn though and matched him as he said “Not this way.”

“It can’t even get me from this side of the line, you said it yourself! What are you so afraid of,” Stiles burst out, annoyed but confident logic was on his side.

“It’s playing with us,” Derek said darkly, not looking at Stiles anymore, glaring at an indistinct overlapping of strings. Stiles frowned at him. Derek had a hunted look about him that made Stiles think of someone cornered in chess. The pieces in this game were harder to recover though.

Stiles stepped closer, trying to get Derek to look at him. “What are you talking about?”

Derek did not respond for a long few moments, his eyes getting darker. Stiles could almost see the cracks in him, the constant stress taking its toll. He was so fed up with this and the anger he was feeling redirected from Derek toward this situation and whatever was doing this to them. Suddenly he felt invincible, his anger a ring of fire around his body. That fire was smelting his helplessness into a plan, a counterattack.

Without even thinking about the consequences, not waiting for Derek to respond with whatever madness he’d cooked up, he took quick strides to the front door and yanked it open. Derek was up and after him, grabbing his arm and turning him around as he stepped out onto the concrete stoop outside. Stiles stumbled a little as he lost his balance, but regained it to meet Derek’s stare with a heated, determined glare.

“What do you think you’re doing,” Derek asked, cool and calm despite the fury burning in his eyes.

“I’m going to do this, whether you help me or not,” Stiles said certainly, matching Derek’s tone and not bothering to fight the grip on his arm.

Derek was too stunned by the words coming out of Stiles’s mouth with such certainty to do anything more than stare incredulously at him for a moment. Stiles waited patiently, watching the emotions range across Derek’s features. Initially it was a hard stern resolve to stop Stiles, but Derek knew the arduous and dangerous battle of wills that would be and slowly his expression started to cave reluctantly.

He finally looked away from Stiles, sighed agitatedly, then looked back at him resolutely, “Fine, but we do this my way.”

They were already on the opposite side of town as their warehouse; not far from where the other side of the ash line cut them from the world again. Stiles soon found out that Derek’s way turned out to be poking at the edges of the line as far from where they thought it might be as possible.

As they walked, Derek hadn’t let go of Stiles’s upper arm as he stubbornly frog marched him in the opposite direction Stiles wanted to be going, like he thought Stiles would bolt away and run straight into whatever waiting jaws they would surely find on the other end of the ash. Stiles didn’t fight on this too much. He made several pointed remarks about Derek’s need to be his knight in shining armor, but, honestly, whatever made Derek go along with this was fine by him. Stiles needed answers.

Stiles’s plan, which had started as a crazy, vague idea that had him storming out to face any danger this world could throw at him, was forming itself into something more solid. He could feel his feet getting lighter as they walked as hope returned to his heart. It had been so long since he’d felt that weight of dread lifted he’d almost forgotten what it was like to feel anything else. It was still risky, impossibly so, but if they knew more about this thing and what it was capable of, it might just work.

He was jerked from his thoughts as Derek suddenly stopped in his tracks and his grip tightened protectively on Stiles.

Stiles tensed and he followed Derek’s line of sight down to the ash line that they could finally see some twenty feet in front of them. It took him a long moment to realize he was looking at world gone greyscale as the shadows darkened and colors bled out.

“It’s noon,” Derek breathed disbelieving, turning left and right to look up and down the street as the light drained out of the world.

“Yeah, welcome to the Twilight Zone,” Stiles said weakly.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did I say the end of June? I definitely remember saying July...  
> Anyway, these last couple of chapters have been fighting me hard, but I desperately hope they don't disappoint. You guys deserve the best.
> 
> Warning: Gore, pain, torture- Wait, why am I warning you? You probably knew that already.

The world went from twilight to midnight in a matter of moments as the two of them instinctively stood back to back, arms up and ready to defend against whatever was coming. They could feel something stirring far off over the silent, now exceptionally menacing, buildings of the town.

“We have to get back,” Derek said, his voice low and hunted.

“There’s no time for that,” Stiles muttered back, frustrated. Stiles could feel a similar desire to run back to the warehouse and lock themselves in, but whatever was with them would cut them off long before they got there. Even if they could, what would they do? Something new was happening and if they locked that door this time, they might never open it again.

Derek made a move as though to ignore Stiles’s words and drag him back anyway, but he froze. Stiles looked over his shoulder to see Derek’s head tilted a little to one side, listening. The stiffness in his neck and shoulders told Stiles it wasn't anything good.

“What´s happening,” Stiles asked urgently, needing information and unable to reach it with his more limited senses.

“That thing you wanted to see? It’s coming,” Derek yelled furiously, whirling to face him with an accusatory glare like this was Stiles’s fault.

Stiles ignored the harsh tone, his mind shutting down every emotion to create a cold, analytical state of mind, and demanded to know, “Where?”

Derek took a second to concentrate then answered. “It sounds like its trying to get through the barrier by the warehouse, but it won’t be there for long.”

“It’s trying to get through,” Stiles asked for clarity. Derek nodded, silent and impatient, the mounting stress twisting his jaw into a harsh line of tension.

“Good, that means we can trap it,” Stiles said, moving toward the ash line.

Derek’s hand fell on his right shoulder like a great weight and there were suddenly claws pressing against the delicate skin on the curve between his neck and shoulder, mere seconds from breaking through.

Ice filled Stiles’s veins and his heart skipped a terrified beat. Derek didn’t ever freak out this badly, his control was nearly perfect, even on a full moon. Stiles moved his eyes slowly up the arm holding him until he saw Derek’s eyes gleaming alpha red back at him. Derek’s speech was impaired by fangs as he commanded, in a voice that wasn’t truly human, “Stop making it worse.”

Stiles tried to keep his voice level and calm, but it shook none the less as he said, “Derek, you need to cool the werewolf jets for a second and listen to me, okay? I can get us out of here, but only if you calm down and help me.”

Stiles’s words seemed to have no effect. Losing their only safe haven seemed to have broken the last strings holding together his only ally’s fraying sanity. Derek’s vibrantly red eyes darted toward some new noise just outside Stiles’s range of detection. Stiles could barely understand the words coming out of Derek’s mouth as he gave up bothering with proper pronunciation, but none of it sounded good. His hand hand relaxed its grip on Stiles as he hunching forward, readying for an attack but looking so small.

Stiles turned and put his hand on Derek’s cheek to force the frazzled alpha to look at him. Derek complied without thinking, without any resistance, and Stiles felt the weight of Derek’s head against his hand increase as he leaned against it like a lifeline.

“Derek, do you trust me,” Stiles asked.

Derek searched Stiles’s certain gaze and something he found there seemed to calm him as the wolf features slowly drew back. Stiles didn’t know when they’d gotten to this point but he wasn’t going to question it now. Derek shut his eyes and took a breath before answering, quiet and honest, “Yes.”

Derek opened his eyes again and this time they were determined and once more their brilliant human color as he started to say, “But-” Stiles cut him off stubbornly with, “No ‘but’, we’re getting out of here.”

Derek gave a single nod of assent against his palm and Stiles felt something in his chest grow warm. He could feel time trickling away like a giant clock in the distance was ticking down. He had to pull his eyes away from Derek's mouth before he decided to use, what might possibly be, their last moments for something other than saving their lives.

He turned back to the ash and started running for it, Derek following one step behind him. They were almost on top of it when Stiles started to explain, “After I break it I need you to-” But he never got any further than that.

Stiles hit the ground screaming as a white hot pain shot through his ankle and was quickly followed by two similar piercing points of agony farther up his leg. His vision blacked out for a few seconds, tears streamed from his eyes, and his fists clenched so hard he felt his nails bite through the skin of his palms.

Derek was crouched beside him, hand hovering over his shoulder as he stared down the length of Stiles’s body at whatever had hold of his leg. Desperation, fear, and fury drove Stiles’s thoughts into a blur imagining all that could be going wrong now. He heaved his head around, needing to know. Derek caught the movement a second too late and tried to block his view, but Stiles had already seen.

There were three huge spikes driven through his leg at odd angles. Each had a series of sharp, triangular points studding the surface that prevented them from being pulled back out the way they’d gone in, like a series of arrowheads stacked on top of each other.

He cried out wordlessly in both pain and fury as he looked back out to the world beyond their cage of fear and ash. It was so close. He reached out, his fingers clawing at the ground until he was touching the other side of the line. It was the same packed gravel as their side but something about knowing that it was outside made the air around his fingers feel different, new and fresh.

Derek ripped open Stiles's pant leg to see the damage better and immediately placed his hand on the now exposed skin of his calf just above the fist of the nasty looking spikes. He drew the pain out of the throbbing stab wounds slowly and heard Stiles's breathing calm down a little. While they had obviously erupted from the ground, the spikes didn't seem to have actually come from anywhere. They had the same unsettling nothingness about them as the cell phone and weren't made of a metal Derek recognized. That was a mystery for another time though; he needed to get Stiles away from such an exposed area if they wanted to have any chance at surviving.

He couldn't just pull Stiles's leg back off the spikes without completely destroying it and, if he did that and they managed to escape without anything more going wrong, Stiles would bleed out long before they found help. Derek summoned his claws and slashed at the nearest spike as low as he dared. The metal protested in an ugly, high screaming, but he didn't make even a dent in it. He wrapped a hand around it, ignoring the sharp edges as they drove into his palm and tried to yank it out of the ground, but it didn't so much as shift in any direction.

The frustrated breath behind Stiles told him nothing Derek had tried was doing any good. He glanced over his shoulder and saw one side of Derek’s face through the distortion of pained tears gathered in the corners of his eyes. Derek’s jaw was tight and his brow furrowed with frustration as his eyes flicked between the three spikes.

There had been a time once when Derek would have left Stiles to die in this situation, he was sure, but now there was something so gratifying about seeing the usually stoic alpha showing concern for him, to know that he had earned that from Derek.

Stiles could admit now, trapped as he was, that he never really thought they would both get out of this alive, but there was still a chance for one of them. He flexed his fingers, indecision holding him back for a second, but he knew anything else they could do would just waste more time or make Derek more vulnerable, especially if something else went wrong.

“Derek,” Stiles demanded, his voice as strong as he could make it to draw Derek’s full attention, “You have to leave me.”

He raked his fingers through the ash and, as the barrier broke down, the world suddenly but subtly changed around them. The darkness seemed to be taking on forms at the corners of Stiles’s eyes and that clock counting down in the distance sped up.

Derek’s eyes cut toward him, taking in both the look on his eyes and the broken line behind him. Then a glare settled stubbornly on his face. A clearer no could not have been given as he continued to examine the spikes driven through Stiles’s leg.

“You can get help and come back for me,” Stiles argued, but the words tasted like a lie on his tongue and Derek obviously agreed. They didn't know where they were or how far away help might be and whatever was after them was coming, he could feel it in his gut like he’d swallowed a time bomb.

“Derek,” Stiles growled furiously through gritted teeth, glaring at the werewolf with all he had and commanding him, “Get over the damn line, _now_.”

“No,” Derek yelled back at him, just as furious.

“We can stop this thing,” Stiles almost cried, frustrated.

Stiles’s leg was in unimaginable pain and he just wanted Derek to be safe on the other side of that line so he could just curl up and die having achieved something here. But Derek was still trying to save him. He had shifted so he was in front of Stiles again and was trying to grab onto him. Stiles batted his hands away but Derek grabbed his shoulders and forced him to look into his face.

“I’m not leaving without you,” Derek said, stubborn as an ox.

Stiles barely held back his sob, choking on his own breath, eyes streaming, as he asked, “Why are you doing this? Just go.”

He was crying now, unashamed fat tears falling from his eyes and flowing unimpeded down his cheeks. He shoved at Derek again but the werewolf held onto him tighter, pulling the crippled human awkwardly against his chest in a mimic of the position from their shared nights, arms wrapped tight around Stiles.

“I can’t,” there was a canyon of loss and pain a mile wide in Derek’s voice, but there was also certainty and something Stiles did not want to deal with that had been growing between them even before all this that he knew would get them both killed. Stiles fists balled tightly in Derek’s shirt and he buried his head over Derek’s heart, allowing himself just a few more seconds of this.

“Don’t do this right now, just go,” Stiles scolded him, voice cracking pathetically on the last word as he let go of the fabric in his hand and tried pushing him away again, but there was no strength behind it.

“No,” Derek said stubbornly, voice raw.

“There’s nothing you can do for me,” Stiles yelled angrily, voice torn apart, “Go back to your pack. You might be a screw-up, but they need you.”

He felt Derek shake his shake his head like he couldn’t use his voice anymore, his arms tightening their hold. Stiles trembled against Derek for a few seconds more before he broke down and finally begged, voice quiet, “Please, Derek, I don’t want you to die with me. I can’t watch that; don’t make me.”

Derek bowed his head low over Stiles, warm breath brushing the short hair at the back of his neck. He was quiet for what felt like a long time but it wasn’t more than a few breaths between them.  Then Stiles felt the Derek’s back stiffen with resolve and it dawned on him what his brave, stupid, self-sacrificing alpha had decided to do.

“No,” Stiles croaked desperately as Derek started untangling himself from Stiles.

Derek got out from under him, holding his wrists to keep Stiles from grabbing onto Derek again as he was trying so hard to do. He started walking back the way they’d come and Stiles twisted his body painfully to the side, crying out as his leg protested, but moving anyway.

“I already told you, I’m not leaving without you,” Derek said, resolved.

“You said it yourself, it's too strong! It’ll kill you,” Stiles yelled angrily, grabbing Derek’s pant leg to try and hold him back.

Derek froze for a second and Stiles grip tightened on his leg as he tried to pull Derek back toward the ash. Derek ignored Stiles frantic dragging and reclaimed his ankle from the other’s hands before dropping into a defensive crouch between Stiles and whatever was coming. Then Stiles’s breathing stopped as a high pitched shriek turned his blood to ice.

They could hear something crunching over the gravel just around the edge of the building ahead of them. Stiles had stopped his fruitless attempt to reach Derek and get him out of harm’s way and was staring, wide eyed and terrified as dread hit him like a fourth spike driven through his stomach.

“Derek, _don’t_ ,” Stiles begged, shouting the last word over another grating screech.

Derek didn’t listen to him, letting the shift take him, eyes glowing and face becoming more wolfish. His claws scraped across the gravel and a growl rolled out of his throat in challenge. A shape, moving so fast it was nothing but a colorless blur, shot around the corner.

“Derek, run,” Stiles shouted, desperate for one of them to get out of this alive.

The words had not stopped vibrating on Stiles’ lips when the beast slammed into Derek from the opposite side he had been expecting. They careened through the air, a riot of sound, and the next second Derek hit the ground and slid along the rocks. He turned his head quickly, trying to find his attacker, but it slammed into him again, sending him spinning back toward Stiles. Before he had even gotten a chance to recover it hit him once more, sending him flying across the ash line, and his back met a solid oak trunk, knocking the wind from his lungs. He heard Stiles shouting but he couldn’t concentrate enough to make out the words, vision blurred from the hit and the beast nowhere in sight.

Stiles could barely keep up with the creature’s volleys as it tossed Derek around like a rag doll, but, by the third hit, when Derek was sprawled in the roots of a large tree, he knew what to do. He put all he had into his belief and flung his hand forward. The ash swirled around itself, like a mini dust devil, and sealed the line again.

Stiles laughed triumphantly at his timing as he caught sight of something to his right hit the barrier and bounce back, locked inside the line. His triumph did not last long though. His vision went white and pain howled through his body as his leg was roughly torn from the jagged spikes. He screamed so loud he could feel his throat being torn up, like a spike ball was shooting up from his lungs.

Derek heard Stiles scream of agony and, ignoring his injuries and shaky vision, shoved off the trunk of the tree and raced toward him, calling his name. He was nearly thrown back when he hit the invisible wall created by the ash that he was incapable of crossing. He finally blinked his vision clear and froze at the sight before him. Stiles was suspended by his bloody ankle from the supple wrist of the one person Derek had believed he’d never see again, but his luck had never been that good.

Her name was a thousand horrors and poison on his tongue as he said, in a bare little breath, “Kate.”

She looked the same as she had the last time he’d seen her, sadistic, unconcerned eyes and twisted smile, but there was something about her that was different. It was not simply that she was supposed to be a corpse in a grave; the air around her seemed to turn viscous and scraped the wrong way across his nerves.

“You know, I thought I’d gotten you out of the picture after our little office party, but Derek was so determined to keep you around. You must be real _special_ , huh,” she asked Stiles in a sweet tone that was dripping with condescension, shaking him for effect and making him whimper as her ruby nails dug into the raw flesh around his wounds.

Derek tensed at the sound of Stiles in pain and tried to reach him, but the ash line Stiles had erected between them prevented him from crossing the mere half a yard between them.

She smiled at the scene before her, drinking it in, and addressed Derek as she commented flippantly, “Your human’s kind of pitiful Derek. I’d say your standards have dropped.”

“De…rek,” Stiles barely got the word out of his throat. He tried to focus his eyes on the upside down image of the desperate werewolf before him, vision covered in spots and swaying. Kate put her free hand on her hip and bent her head to look at Stiles in false pity.

“Aw. Do you want your wolfy to come save you,” she mocked, using an exaggeration of the voice one might use when talking to a baby.

She laughed melodically as she shook him again; squeezing his hurt leg and making Stiles bite his lip until it bled to keep from uttering more than a small cry of pain. Her laugh sustained for a moment and it grated on Derek’s already frayed nerves.

“Let’s play a game,” she said with a poisonous smile that made Derek’s stomach drop horribly.

Stiles suddenly went completely still, his eyes wide and horrified. Derek knew that look. On impulse bred of so many nights dealing with that horrifying mixture of screams and cries, Stiles reached out for Derek. Derek tried again to reach him, to clasp his hand and stop all this with one decisive yank, but, though both could feel the heat from the other’s skin in the ghost of touch before contact, they were still too far away, held apart by the invisible barrier between them.

Something black and tar like coiled down Kate’s arm. It had the same feeling of wrongness that itched at the back of the throat as the cell phone and the thing over the bunker at night. It slid, an unwelcome visitor, onto Stiles’s leg as the screams increased in volume. Stiles fruitlessly covered his ears with his palms and, despite the pain, tried to shake her off, kicking and flailing. It did no good. The screams morphed torturously into tormented white noise as the warm, sickly goo covered Stiles’s mangled wound. Then he screamed like every fiber of his body was being ripped apart at once and reformed a hundred times over, his voice only one among the hundreds pounding in his ears.

“Leave him alone you psychotic bitch,” Derek shouted, shoving against the barrier for all he was worth.

Then it all stopped in a whisper and a tendril of shadow on the wind. Stiles went limp, his knuckles dragging against the small rocks in the road. Derek was both relieved and filled with new terror for what might come next.

Kate clicked her tongue disapprovingly. “That was rude, Derek. I should teach you to share,” she mused as she idly traced lines over Stiles’ hanging body. She thought for a few exaggerated seconds then brightened considerably as though she had just come up with a wonderful idea and asked, a dark undertone to her voice, “Which half do you want?”

Derek blanched at the question, helplessness settling like a weight on top of him. “You took everything I love once,” Derek shouted angry and powerless, “isn’t that enough?!”

“Oh sweetheart,” she simpered with a poisonous, shark like smile, “It’s never enough.”

Stiles was already turning ashen from blood loss and it was a wonder he’d stayed conscious this long through the pain. So when he saw something out of the corner of his eye coming toward them, he was sure he was hallucinating. It had a trunk and tusks like an elephant but the body of a lion that blended smoothly into tiger paws and a cow tail that flicked mesmerizingly back and forth. Stiles blinked hard to clear the vision from his eyes, but it was still there, stalking closer on silent paws.

Its big brown eyes were fixed on Kate. It tensed its muscles and leapt just as Stiles heard Derek howl, furious and terrified. It slammed into Kate just as Stiles felt the ghost of something rip his shirt and graze his now exposed belly.

Stiles fell hard as Kate released him and she and the mismatched creature slammed into the ground. There was a swarm of black dots multiplying in front of Stiles’s eyes. His ears were full of white noise but he could vaguely hear his name being called over the sounds of a desperate struggle somewhere off to his left. Derek’s face came into view only inches in front of his nose, trying furiously to reach him, eyes blazing red. Stiles was having some trouble working out what Derek was doing, but he had just enough mental capacity left to stretch out his arm.

Derek grabbed his wrist and pulled him swiftly into the air. His leg drug for a second across the harsh gravel then Derek caught him and pulled him close to his chest like he’d never let him go again. Stiles melted into the sudden warmth and relief from his pain as thick black lines crawled up Derek’s arms.

The last things Stiles was aware of was the discordant noises around him, both calming and horrifying, before everything faded to black. There was a loud, horrible, female scream accompanying a wet ripping sound from the other side of the ash, but, louder and closer, was Derek’s strong, soothing heartbeat in one ear and his promise in the other, “It’s over.”


	12. Chapter 12

Stiles woke with a thick head. He wasn’t fully awake though and everything was muted. There was an argument happening somewhere off to one side of him, he was sure, but he couldn’t make out the words through his stuffed up ears. His eyelids were heavy but he had to find out what was happening. When he opened his eyes, there was a vertical silver line across his vision. It tickled his memory strongly, but he couldn’t recall why exactly. He blinked at it and realized he was looking at the counter in the veterinary clinic with his head on the table. He rolled it slowly to the other side, the light blinding him for a second as it rolled by overhead.

He recognized the back of Scott’s head and saw Derek just past his shoulder, his arms crossed and his expression guarded. Derek caught sight of him and a range of emotions flew across his face. There was concern, relief, a heavy, guilty shame, and the rest were too fast for Stiles to recognize in his sluggish state. Derek looked away from him, like it was too hard to see him, and started stalking out of the room.

There was an exchange between Scott and someone just outside Stiles’s range of vision before Scott charged after Derek with purpose, seeming not to have noticed Stiles was in some semblance of consciousness. Stiles did not remain that way long though. His eyelids dropped and refusing to lift again as he was swept back into the oblivion of sleep again.

When he woke next, the fog was gone from his head and he sat up slowly. Everything spun for a second and he had to hold his eyes closed against it. He gripped his left hand tight around the sphere clutched there.

“Ah, you’re awake,” Deaton’s voice echoed around him and redoubled his nausea for a second.

There was a cool paper cup being maneuvered into his hand as Deaton ordered him gently, “Drink this; it’ll help.”

Stiles peered at it with one eye, seeing the doctor’s darker skin beside his own as he offered the cup to Stiles. Even that simple contrast was too much to look at and he closed his eyes with a groan. He grabbed the cup with a muttered thanks and sucked it down in a single, desperate gulp. Everything righted itself like the world was suddenly brought back upright from a tilted position. Stiles blinked bemusedly at the little examination room of the veterinary clinic. The place was the same as the last time he’d seen it when he'd come to pick up Scott, but now there was another exam table pushed up beside the one he'd been laid out on. He and Deaton were the only two people in the room.

“Where’s Derek and Scott,” Stiles asked, recalling vaguely the two of them being there earlier.

“They left about half an hour ago,” Deaton said, taking the cup back from him and turning away.

Stiles was distracted by the odd sight of his legs on the cool grey metal of the table. He reasoned that someone must have changed his pants because they were no longer torn and bloody. However, there was no bulk of bandages on one leg and he felt only a slight twinge when he dared to shift his leg closer to inspect it. He apprehensively grabbed the fabric with one hand and pulled it back.

Stiles had to stare at it for a few long seconds before he felt along his leg to confirm what his eyes were telling him. The skin was red and irritated where there should be rough, bloody stab wounds, but otherwise it was smooth with only a mild hint of soreness that would be gone within the hour.

“How long have I been out,” Stiles asked, puzzled.

“About three hours give or take,” Deaton answered easily.

Stiles whipped his head around to stare at the vet. “We were that close this whole time,” he asked, shocked, “But that-” “You never left,” Deaton interrupted, each word slow and precise.

When Stiles was still obviously nonplused, his mind racing back and forth, Deaton prompted him gently, “It might be easier to understand if you tell me what happened, from the beginning.”

Stiles slowly turned to face Deaton beside him, carefully dangling his legs off the table, still not fully believing the input of his senses. Deaton prompted him with a nod of his head and a small lip smile. Stiles bounced the ball off his palm nervously, though he couldn’t have said why he was feeling apprehensive.

He told the story from the start, eyeing the man before him uncertainly as he went through every detail he could remember. A lot of parts were oddly fuzzy and hard to hold onto, but, Stiles reasoned, that was probably a side effect of his injuries. He pointedly ignored his lack of injuries for the moment. The vet did not react to any of it and Stiles tried to remind himself that Derek must have already told him all this while Stiles was knocked out, but something still felt off.

“So this bunker was the one place you felt safe,” Deaton asked when he was done, as though he was just confirming.

Stiles laughed derisively at that, “It was the only place that was safe. It was steel and cement with this giant lock. If we’d have slept in one of the houses or something, we’d have been killed.”

“Killed by what, exactly,” Deaton asked, the question slow and clear.

There was something in his tone that made Stiles stop bouncing the ball and look at him more closely. Deaton always seemed to know more about what was going on than anyone else. He could tell Deaton was trying to lead him to something that had been nagging at Stiles for some time, but he couldn’t quite figure out where the vet was going with this.

His hesitation was evident in his voice as Stiles answered, “I don’t know what exactly, but there was something out there and Kate Argent, who picked up super speed from being dead, by the way.”

Deaton nodded and there was a change to his easy lip smile that meant Stiles had just confirmed something for him. He moved away to fiddle with the glossy pages of a little book on the counter and Stiles waited for him to say something.

When it became obvious that the vet was not going to speak without further prompting Stiles asked, “What does that mean?”

Deaton stuck a marker into the book and turned it to a different page before turned back to him with a knowing, tentative smile. He shot the question back at Stiles, “What do you think it means?”

Stiles gave him an annoyed look and said, accusingly, “You know something I don’t.”

“You know, Stiles. You just don’t want to admit it,” he said cryptically.

“I’m getting kind of sick of the riddles here, Doc,” Stiles said, frustration leaking into his voice.

Deaton’s voice was maddeningly calm as he started walking Stiles through it, like a teacher explaining letters to an angry child learning to read, “Think about it; how much of what happened really made any logical sense? There were unknown enemies lurking in the dark, things popped up where they hadn’t been before, and there was only one safe place. What does that sound like to you?”

“Like a bad horror movie,” Stiles said petulantly.

“Or a nightmare,” Deaton countered casually.

Stiles frowned at the vet and rolled the ball between his fingers as he went over the words and matched them with the memories. It was almost too easy to do and he rejected the notion as soon as it hit him. The idea didn’t leave his head though. Deaton’s patience was unending as he waited for Stiles to put the pieces together.

Stiles shook his head and when he spoke his words were filled with an undertone of denial, “That couldn’t have been a dream, it was too real.”

“There are some beings,” Deaton said carefully, “who can create illusions so strong they seem like reality.”

“Some beings,” Stiles repeated and there was a note of wariness in his voice. This seemed to be getting at the heart of the matter and he could tell that Deaton knew a lot more about this than anyone else.

“What’s that in your hand,” Deaton asked, though it wasn’t truly a question.

Stiles answered impatiently, “That’s just my-” but he stopped because he didn’t have any idea how he was going to finish that sentence. He slowly looked down his arm to his hand. Clutched between his fingers was a ball, much like a large bouncy ball, something a child would play with, but it was odd. It was a light blue and seemed to glow with an inner light. It fit comfortably in his hand, like it had been shaped specifically to be held there.

Deaton pulled the picture book from the counter and pushed it in front of Stiles wordlessly before he had a chance to react. He took it without thinking and stared down at it. The page it was open to show a cute, colorful fox with several tails transforming into a stylized girl with large eyes and straight black hair. The characters were in front of a backdrop of a spinning world that grew more distinct the further it was from them. The thing that really caught his eye was the little, blue child's ball at their feet. He glanced down at his hand, spinning the ball faster and faster in his unnerved state, then up at Deaton warily, looking for an answer. The man was watching him impassively and nodded for him to turn to the marked page.

Stiles complied grudgingly, knowing he would get nothing until he did. He stuck his fingers between the pages and let them fall open in his lap. His hand clamped around the ball as he stared for a long moment at a familiar, mismatched thing on four legs. Even though this whimsical two dimensional version looked so friendly and approachable, he’d seen it stalking across gravel and tearing Kate Argent apart. He flipped the book to the cover and read the title, “Children’s Illustrated Eastern Mythology”.

“That creature is a Baku,” Deaton explained into Stiles’s shocked silence, “It eats nightmares. When they come up against a truly difficult case, like, for instance, an alpha werewolf blocking them and allowing those nightmares to fester, they have been known to seek the help of a Kitsune, a fox spirit. A powerful Kitsune is able to create a world within dreams that feels like reality.”

“Okay,” Stiles said, drawing out the word doubtfully and asked, holding the ball up, “And what’s with this?”

Deaton smiled and replied, “It seems you’re owed a favor.”

Stiles was still frowning at Deaton, mulling over his words. He sat forward and said, skeptically, “Okay, let’s say I go with this for a second and a Kitsune and a Baku put Derek in some kind of manifested alternate reality to solve his seriously deep set issues. Why was I dragged into it?”

There was an odd smile on Deaton’s face at that which Stiles didn’t want to examine further as he said, “I imagine because Derek couldn’t face this alone and you’re the only one he would let through to help him.”

He definitely couldn’t hold eye contact after that. Stiles hadn’t even gotten around to admitting it to himself enough to tell Scott yet what was going on between himself and Derek; he definitely didn’t want to have any kind of discussion about it with Deaton.

“So I’m Derek’s in-house therapist now,” Stiles asked, tossing the book unceremoniously onto the table beside him.

Deaton bent his head to catch Stiles eye and smiled kindly. His voice was soft and knowing as he said, “I think you know you’re more than that.”

Stiles changed his train of thought out of there so fast smoke might have been coming out of his ears. “How do you even know any of this,” Stiles asked. Deaton had the look of a man heavily involved in the matter; none of this information could have possibly been garnered from just observing them or flipping through a silly picture book.

Deaton smiled like there was an inside joke going way over Stiles’s head inside that question. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, blue, child’s ball with a dying glow flickering in the center.

He bounced it off his palm and caught it with a warm smile and said, “I might have called in a favor.”

He left Stiles to chew on that, walking out the door with the ball to do whatever veterinarians who moonlighted as emissaries did in their spare time.

 

Four days later

Stiles had spent the last three nights with all the lights in his room on and heavy blankets over his windows like he could lock out the darkness. There was still an itching paranoia under his skin that everything had been real and that it wasn’t over yet. His memories of it had faded significantly, as dreams are want to do, but the creeping feeling of constant stress and panic lingered like a bad head cold. He tried to shake himself out of it, but every time he closed his eyes visions of the nightmare flared in the darkness there. By the fourth night, he got angry, the fury building inside him like the electricity flowing through his lamp was suddenly hooked up under his skin until he had to do something. So he’d snuck out, hopped in his jeep, and drove to a little park at the edge of the preserve that had long been empty of visitors.

It had been hard to get out of his car, hard not to keep a close eye on the trees and their shifting shadows, and harder still to force his eyes away from all that as he lay down on the grass. The stars were a hundred thousand pinpricks of light glowed softly in the sky as Stiles stared up at them. That last few moments in the dream had been void of stars and, somehow, looking at them made it easier to breathe.

The ball, which had been clutched in his hand like a talisman against the darkness flew into the edge of his vision every now and again as he tossed it lazily into the air and caught it again. Whenever things had started to become overwhelming he found the ball rolling between his fingers or popping into the air from his palm. He was never sure if he’d sought out its smooth, round presence or if it just appeared wherever he happened to need it. He wanted to find that creepy, but he’d met creepy and the calming aura that radiated out from the ball was not. He still wasn’t sure that he trusted a creature well known for being a trickster to help him out with anything, but he supposed it was a good ally to have should he find himself in need of reality warping.

As though Stiles had expected the question, he didn’t jump when Derek appeared, as though formed from the shadows beside him, and asked, “What are you doing out here?”

“Proving it’s safe,” Stiles answered nonchalantly, addressing the constellations over his head and thoughtlessly returning the ball in his pocket.

“It’s not,” Derek said with an emphasis that told Stiles to get back home.

“I’m aware of that, thank you,” Stiles said, the words more cuttingly sarcastic than he’d meant them to be.

He wanted to think that he wasn’t really mad about the whole thing, it hadn’t really been Derek’s fault that they’d been thrown in there, after all. Three days had done a lot to fade the memory of the nightmare and let him cool down, but he was still a little ticked off. Though, maybe that was more at Derek for not returning his messages than anything.

Stiles closed his eyes for a second and tried to gentle his tone as he stated, “I just got kidnapped inside my head, safety is relative. Besides,” he turned to look at Derek standing beside him, head framed by stars, “you’re here.”

Derek was silent for a moment and Stiles didn’t break it. He watched the light of the half-moon reflect back off Derek’s eyes as he looked away from Stiles.

“That doesn’t make it better,” Derek said quietly.

“It’s better than being alone. I thought that’s one of those things your dream was supposed to beat into you,” despite his best effort, Stiles still sounded a little accusatory when he said that.

Derek’s eyes flicked down to Stiles then away again before he said, “You could have called Scott.”

“I don’t want to talk to Scott,” Stiles said.

That wasn’t entirely true. He wanted to talk to Scott about this; he just wasn’t sure what to say. He had been sucked into a dream world with Derek to help him recover from his inner demons while Scott and Deaton watched over them. He wasn’t sure where that left them. He felt different though, everything was a little different.

He stood up so he could face Derek instead of being loomed over. It struck him, not for the first time, that there was only an inch or so difference in their height. That was like a lot of things about them; they could understand each other most of the time because they were just enough alike. That could almost have been Stiles’s dream.

He knew it was confrontational but he wasn’t willing to dance around this forever, so he asked, “Are you going to change the subject every time I bring it up?”

“There’s not much to talk about,” Derek deflected in a tone that indicated Stiles should drop the subject now.

“That’s a load of bull and you know it,” Stiles said with a glare that challenged Derek as a coward.

“I don’t know what you want me to say,” Derek was tense in tone and every line of his body, “It happened.”

“Yeah but it happened inside your head,” Stiles said, more forcefully than he meant to, but he wasn’t going to let Derek off the hook with that.

Derek’s muscled released slowly in a resigned fashion and Stiles could see in his eyes that glimmer of shame from letting another person down, letting someone else be ruined by the train wreck that was his life. Derek thought Stiles blamed him, hated him for what he’d dragged him into.

As though he thought that was actually what Stiles wanted, Derek started to say he was sorry. Stiles grit his teeth. He was angry that Derek would assume that about him, as though all that time they’d spent together had actually been nothing more than a dream.

“Don’t apologize,” Stiles interrupted with the weight of his indignation, “That’s not what I want.”

“Then what,” Derek asked, little frustrated and defensive, like he still expected Stiles to attack him.

Stiles opened his mouth, intent on saying something, but the words got lost somewhere on the way to his mouth. He didn’t know what he wanted Derek to say, it didn’t make any sense, but his eyes were locked on Derek’s and there was something there. That magnetism between them was strong and there was an ache in his chest he remembered feeling before.

“I don’t know,” Stiles admitted in weary frustration tearing his eyes away from Derek.

His anger was deflating fast and he didn’t know what to do with himself or what to do with the feelings trying to make themselves heard inside him. This would be the perfect time for Derek to disappear, Stiles noted and half hoped he would just so Stiles could pretend this had never happened. Derek stayed though, standing across from Stiles. The moment was held together with a fragile web and it felt as though, if either of them shifted, it would shatter into a thousand shards that would slay them both. A cool breeze blew around them and ruffled the soft grass at their feet.

“You’d die for me,” Derek stated quietly, like it still surprised him. It had surprised Stiles a little too, if he was perfectly honest. Until that moment behind the ash, he’d thought that he would willingly die for only two people in the world. Now it seemed that list had grown.

“You seemed a little too eager to return the favor,” Stiles shot back quietly trying to make it more trivial than it was.

“That’s different,” Derek protested almost wearily.

That made Stiles angry all over again and he glared daggers at Derek. “How? Because you’re a werewolf,” he scoffed taking a step forward in challenge so they were almost nose to nose, “Or because you don’t value your own life?”

Derek was silent but Stiles knew him well enough by now. Stiles saw the shift in Derek’s stance and he knew the werewolf was going to make his escape back into the woods. He grabbed Derek’s wrist to hold him there and, even though he could rip himself away if he wanted, Derek let him.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Stiles said clearly but quietly, almost as though he might spook Derek if he spoke the words too loud, “and you know I’m not just talking about our little trip down Horror Lane.”

Derek tensed as Stiles spoke and he was sure, for a second, that Derek would actually run this time. He searched Stiles’s eyes for a long moment with something small and vulnerable in his expression, like the ghost of that scared teenage boy who’d just watched his world burn was peaking through. Stiles didn’t falter and Derek looked away, his stance a little different, like he had taken off a heavy backpack.

Derek’s hand slid into Stiles’s and he squeezed gently as though that was all he could do at the moment to acknowledge the words. Stiles returned the pressure. Time slowed down for a moment between them as their eyes met again. Like his heart had become a steel drum, Stiles felt his heartbeat reverberate through his whole body.

Derek leaned forward. Stiles wasn’t sure what to do for a second, his body flooded with a hundred different commands telling his muscles to move in opposing directions. Then he saw Derek hesitate, his eyes closing off. Purpose filled Stiles and he finished what Derek had started. He let go of Derek’s hand, wrapped his arms around his shoulder, and kissed him like his life depended on it.

Derek’s hesitation didn’t last even a second into the contact. He immediately pulled Stiles closer by the back of his hoodie and returned the pressure with equal desperation.

Conflicting thoughts flashed across Stiles’s mind: they shouldn’t be doing this, they should have done it sooner, this wasn’t real, this was the only real thing in the world. They came at a dizzying speed until everything turned to white noise. Then nothing matter but Derek’s hair under his fingers and the taste of Derek’s mouth lighting up his tongue.

All the pent up emotion that had been burning in their hearts, fear, rage, protectiveness, and something stronger that drew them closer, channeled into every point of contact between them until it felt like an explosion. Then it peaked and they both fell into a softer rhythm, something full of longing and promises.

Stiles’s head was starting to spin and he pulled back to steady himself. As soon as he did, Derek pulled him into a tight hug as though this, what came after, was the final fear looming over them to be conquered.

“I’m glad it was you,” Derek murmured against his ear.

Stiles nuzzled his nose closer to Derek’s neck. He reveled in the reality of the smell and feel of his skin. For the first time, it struck him that this was real, that they weren’t still stuck running through a dream like rats through a maze.

“Promise me something,” Stiles’s request was quiet but strong none the less. The muscles in Derek’s neck tensed, but he nodded for Stiles to continue.

“Next time you need to have a heart to heart about how much our lives suck, do it somewhere in the real world,” Stiles said, a teasing little smirk growing on his lips with every word.

A smile crept its way across Derek’s face as he relaxed and chuckled softly, “I’ll see what I can do.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After three years and some change, we have reached the end. I know it had a lot of build up between all those chapter and all that time twiddling my thumbs, but I hope it didn't disappoint.
> 
> Special thanks to TheDamnRiddler who made a fic inspired by this one and updated it so lightening fast it shamed me back into writing. You are so boss.
> 
> Thanks again to everyone who read, left kudos, commented, and generally kept this story alive to the end. You are all wonderful, amazing people and I honestly still don't know what to do with you, but I love you so much.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Croatoan](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4575762) by [TheDamnRiddler](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheDamnRiddler/pseuds/TheDamnRiddler)




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